The Evening Times – Helen Smith
“LEARNING languages when you’re a child is seen as key to developing young brains and making it easier to learn when older. Now research suggests watching and trying dance could be just as important to promoting how we deal with language. The study found the same brain areas activate when somebody is processing the meaning of a sentence as when watching a series of dance movements. The more coherent a sequence of words or dance motions, the more activity measured in the frontal areas of the brain. A three-second clip of human motion, for example, doesn’t have the same effect as 20 minutes, just as a couple individual words don’t show the same results as a full and meaningful sentence. Researchers from the University of Abertay and French National Institute of Health and Medical Research used 22 professional French dancers watching different lengths of contemporary dance movements while observing brain activity with an MRI scanner.”(more)