Dancing may lighten depression from Parkinson’s,

reposted from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2025/01/05/dancing-parkinsons/ Dancing may lighten depression from Parkinson’s, study suggests A small study found that depression rates dropped after each dance class, with significant improvements that persisted for eight months. January 6, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. ESTYesterday at 6:00 a.m. EST 6 min (iStock) By Marlene Cimons New research suggests that dancing might lighten the depression suffered by many people with Parkinson’s disease, an approach that’s accessible, inexpensive, drug free — and often a lot of fun. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something magical about dancing,” said Joseph DeSouza, an associate professor in the faculty of health at York University and one of the study authors. “Dancing makes people with Parkinson’s feel alive and happy. It proved to be an amazing elixir.” Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI. DeSouza has been studying the effects of dance on Parkinson’s patients and dancing with them — he doesn’t have Parkinson’s but enjoys participating — since 2013. His past work has examined the effects of dance on motor skills and quality-of-life issues such as sleep, sex, anxiety and mood, with only a minimal emphasis on depression, he said. Story continues below advertisement This study, however, focused solely on dancing’s impact on depression using standard depression scale measures from questionnaires, and neuroimaging, to see how dancing affects the brain. The researchers found that dancing both improved mood and prompted changes in the activity of the subcallosal cingulate gyrus (SCG), a brain region in the frontal cortex linked to mood regulation and emotional processing. 🧘 Follow Health & wellness Follow “Not only did the introduction of dance make them feel better, but it impacted the brain similarly to what antidepressants do,” said Helen Mayberg, a behavioral neurologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who has been studying both primary depression and depression in neurological diseases for more than 30 years. “That area of the brain is overactive when you are depressed and decreases its activity with drug treatment — dance appears to do something similar.” Mayberg was not involved in the study. More On Parkinson's Disease Parkinson’s may begin in the gut, study says, adding to growing evidence Parkinson’s may begin in the gut, study says, adding to growing evidence Michael J. 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Story continues below advertisement “Most people think Parkinson’s is just the tremors and the movement problems, but there are other less familiar aspects such as depression and anxiety,” DeSouza said. The recent study was small — a limitation DeSouza acknowledged — and followed 23 Parkinson’s patients in the Sharing Dance Parkinson’s program at Canada’s National Ballet School, along with 11 healthy controls, mostly family members or caretakers. The patients were “young” in their disease, meaning they had been diagnosed only within the past five years, DeSouza said, and “none had ever danced before.” The group included men and women in their 50s to their early 80s, he said. Participants attended weekly 75-minute dance classes for eight months. The series of classes began with simple leg and foot work and pliés — a basic ballet move of bending the knees while keeping the heels on the ground — and progressed to interpretive movements, waltzes and more complicated choreography. Story continues below advertisement The researchers measured mood and depression scores in all participants using the Geriatric Depression Scale before and after class three times during the course of the study and conducted MRI scans up to four times on seven participants who volunteered for imaging. The scientists found that depression rates dropped after each dance class, and the effect was cumulative, with significant improvements that persisted for eight months. The scans showed reduced signals in the SCG, suggesting a decrease in depression over time, he said. “Our pool of people got better with every class,” DeSouza said. J. William Langston, clinical professor of neurology and neuroscience and of pathology at the Stanford School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said that “one of the hardest things in treating Parkinson’s is to get non-exercisers previously to start exercising, so anything they might like — whether boxing or dancing — that involves balance and gait would be terrific.” Story continues below advertisement Mayberg described movement and mood as interconnected. “When you are down in mood, you tend not to move, or you move less,” she said. “Even healthy people use movement to elevate mood — it’s why people run. And dancing is a universal movement.” Dance and Parkinson’s symptoms Nearly 1 million Americans are living with Parkinson’s, and about 90,000 new cases are diagnosed annually, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation. It’s often regarded as a disease of aging — most people are older than 60 when diagnosed — but a small percentage occurs among those younger than 50, the best-known example being actor Michael J. Fox, diagnosed at age 29. Parkinson’s can’t be cured, but certain medications and other treatments can help with its symptoms. There is growing evidence that dance — and many types of exercise — can improve the physical symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Many programs encourage dancing as a way to cope with Parkinson’s symptoms, among them Dance for PD in New York, Dance for Parkinson’s Disease at Stanford Medicine, and ballet classes offered by the San Francisco Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. “While there are effective therapies for depression in Parkinson’s disease, dance may be a useful addition,” said Caroline Tanner, a neurology professor at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California at San Francisco, who was not involved in the study. “Dance is a low-cost, noninvasive intervention that can be implemented anywhere, including one’s home.” Story continues below advertisement DeSouza’s dancing group now numbers about 40. He hopes to expand his research, including learning more about what dancing does to trigger such a positive response. It’s possible the music activates reward centers in the brain and the movement affects sensory and motor circuits, he said. “When they dance, they are receiving reward signals from their teachers and partners,” DeSouza said. He still dances with them. “I’m a scientist, not an artist, but I love being treated like a dancer,” he said. “Every person I dance with feels like a dancer. You can see it. My dream is that every person with Parkinson’s disease in the world starts to dance. If they did, they would all feel better.” 35 Comments By Marlene Cimons Marlene Cimons is a Washington-based freelance writer who specializes in health, science and the environment. She was a Washington reporter for the Los Angeles Times covering public health, biomedical research policy, and food and drug regulation.