Health & Medicine
Ballet and the Brain: Reduced Activity in the Cerebellum and Cerebral Cortex Helps Movement
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Sep 27, 2013 11:16 AM EDT
The secret behind a ballet dancer's ability to perform perfect pirouettes has a lot to do with practice, diligence and years of thorough training. However, science shows that it also has a lot to do with brain training that actually reduces activity in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex.
According to researchers from the Imperial College London, they studied just how complex human balance is and how many organ systems are involved simultaneously in making the body find the right position to balance.
For example, many of us might not know it, but the vestibular organs in the inner ear play an important role in finding our footing. These fluid-filled organs have tiny hairs that can detect the position of the head via the sense of fluid movement. For instance, during a spin, fluid in the body moves and takes time to settle until the body is no longer in motion. Thus, this is why some feel dizzy following a spin.
Ballet dancers can do multiple pirouettes without feeling dizzy, yet this ability isn't due to some trick. Researchers found that it actually involves the body's ability to suppress information coming from the inner-ear organs regarding dizzy feelings.
In order to examine the findings further, researchers included 29 female ballet dancers and age-matched 20 female rowers as a control group.
All individuals involved in the study were then individually spun around in a chair in a dark room. The women were asked to turn a handle after spinning, and were requested to turn the handle as fast as they felt they were spinning. The participants were then hooked onto an MRI scanner for their brain activity to be monitored.
They also examined eye-flexes that were associated with activity of the vestibular organs. They found that both perception of spinning and eye-reflexes associated with the activity of the vestibular organs were reduced in dancers when compared to rowers.
Results showed via the MRI scans that the brains of the dancers were different from the brains of the rowers in two regions, including the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex. The cerebellum plays a major role in motor control and the cerebral cortex plays a role in the perception of dizziness.
The study concludes that the dancers' brains may actually have shrunken activity in the region for ballet movements.
More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Cerebral Cortex.
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First Posted: Sep 27, 2013 11:16 AM EDT
The secret behind a ballet dancer's ability to perform perfect pirouettes has a lot to do with practice, diligence and years of thorough training. However, science shows that it also has a lot to do with brain training that actually reduces activity in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex.
According to researchers from the Imperial College London, they studied just how complex human balance is and how many organ systems are involved simultaneously in making the body find the right position to balance.
For example, many of us might not know it, but the vestibular organs in the inner ear play an important role in finding our footing. These fluid-filled organs have tiny hairs that can detect the position of the head via the sense of fluid movement. For instance, during a spin, fluid in the body moves and takes time to settle until the body is no longer in motion. Thus, this is why some feel dizzy following a spin.
Ballet dancers can do multiple pirouettes without feeling dizzy, yet this ability isn't due to some trick. Researchers found that it actually involves the body's ability to suppress information coming from the inner-ear organs regarding dizzy feelings.
In order to examine the findings further, researchers included 29 female ballet dancers and age-matched 20 female rowers as a control group.
All individuals involved in the study were then individually spun around in a chair in a dark room. The women were asked to turn a handle after spinning, and were requested to turn the handle as fast as they felt they were spinning. The participants were then hooked onto an MRI scanner for their brain activity to be monitored.
They also examined eye-flexes that were associated with activity of the vestibular organs. They found that both perception of spinning and eye-reflexes associated with the activity of the vestibular organs were reduced in dancers when compared to rowers.
Results showed via the MRI scans that the brains of the dancers were different from the brains of the rowers in two regions, including the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex. The cerebellum plays a major role in motor control and the cerebral cortex plays a role in the perception of dizziness.
The study concludes that the dancers' brains may actually have shrunken activity in the region for ballet movements.
More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Cerebral Cortex.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone