(January 30, 2016) In
this study, Faculty of Health researchers were looking at fMRI brain scans of
professional ballet dancers to measure the long-term effects of learning.
“We wanted to study how the brain gets activated with
long-term rehearsal of complex dance motor sequences,” says Professor Joseph
DeSouza, who studies and supports people with Parkinson’s disease. “The study
outcome will help with understanding motor learning and developing effective
treatments to rehabilitate the damaged or diseased brain.”
For the study, 11 dancers (19-50 years of age) from the
National Ballet of Canada were asked to visualize dance movements to music,
while undergoing fMRI scanning. The scans measured Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent
(BOLD) contrasts at four time points over 34 weeks, when they were learning a
new dance.
“Our aim was to find out the long-term impact of the
cortical changes that occur as one goes from learning a motor sequence to
becoming an expert at it,” says coauthor Rachel Bar, who was a ballet dancer
herself. “Our results also suggest that understanding the neural underpinnings
of complex motor tasks such as learning a new dance can be an effective model
to study motor learning in the real world.”