Fox Health: Dance eases depression symptoms in Parkinson's patients, new study suggests

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Dance eases depression symptoms in Parkinson's patients, new study suggests

A new study found that Parkinson's disease patients who took dance classes experienced fewer symptoms of depression, with dance having "a positive effect on the mood circuits in the brain."...                        ...                        ...                            ...Putting a swing in their step could be just the thing to help ease the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login in some Parkinson's patients, a new study suggests.......Patients who took months of dance classes found their depression eased, a small study published recently in the Journal of Medical Internet Research says.......Not only did depression symptoms ease for the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, their brain scans displayed changes in their brain areas related to mood, researchers said.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......"It was very cool to see that dance had a positive effect on the mood circuits in the brain, which we could see in the imaging," senior researcher Joseph DeSouza, an associate professor of neuroscience at York University in Toronto, Canada, said in a university news release......."These improvements that we could see on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login were also reported by the participants via survey," DeSouza said. ......"Our study is the first to demonstrate these benefits across these two detection methods," he also said, as news agency SWNS reported.......The study followed 23 participants in the Sharing Dance Parkinson's program at Canada's National Ballet School who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease — as well as 1You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login, some of whom were relatives of the patients.......Participants took weekly dance classes for eight months, which progressed from simple leg and foot work and pliés to interpretive movements, waltzes and more complicated, choreographed dances, the outlet reported.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......Researchers honed in on a node in the brain, the subcallosal cingulate gyrus (SCG), that has been shown in previous research to be implicated in depression.......The team measured You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login in all participants using a recognized scale before and after every class, plus they conducted regular MRI scans at York.......After each dance class, they found that reported depression rates dropped — and the effect was cumulative from class to class, with "significant" improvements seen after eight months.......The team also found that the MRI scans showed reduced signals in a frontal-cortex brain region associated with emotional regulation and that in a smaller subset of the participants, a significant decrease in depression scores correlated with changes in the SCG node.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......Co-author Dr. Karolina Bearss, a professor at Algoma University, Canada, said, "We essentially showed that [the] SCG blood oxygen level–dependent signal decreases while dancing over time."......Parkinson's is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, the team noted. ......Before diagnosis, there is a "prodromal" phase that can last for two to 10 years. It's characterized by low mood, even before other symptoms appear, such as tremors.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......"People with Parkinson's disease tend to have multiple symptoms that are not just motor-related," said Bearss. "There are a lot of symptoms that include mental and social well-being impairments — one of those being depression."......The new research builds on the team's previous three-year study that found that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login helps Parkinson's patients with motor control, mood and other functions of daily living.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or LoginYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......Dance is thought to have a double benefit, as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login the brain's reward centers and the movement acts on sensory and motor circuits.......Professor DeSouza, who has been dancing with participants in the program for 14 years, said that while dancing is not a treatment for Parkinson's per se, the benefits are clear, according to the report.......He added, "We're not trying to cure Parkinson's with dance. What we're trying to do is to have people live a better quality of life. This goes for both those with the disease, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login of them - they also get benefits of feeling better."......Up to half of all Parkinson's patients suffer from depression or anxiety at some point, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research notes.......A previous study done at Sydney University found that structured dance (of any genre) is generally as effective as — or even more effective than — other types of physical activity for improving psychological and cognitive outcomes among people with chronic illness as well as healthy people....

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