The Dancing Brain: Movements that sharpen your mind

Who doesn’t enjoy dancing. But did you know that the way you dance – the movements, the rhythm and the new steps you push yourself to try – can enhance brain power and creativity, and even help improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. In this episode, you’ll meet dance psychologist Dr Peter Lovatt, who has spent twenty years working in university research labs, where he’s been studying the impact of movement on human thinking and behaviour. Peter’s expertise is in experimental cognitive psychology and his work on memory, thinking, mood, language learning, problem solving, dance and Parkinson’s disease has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. He’s also the author of two books – The Dance Cure: The surprising secret to being smarter, stronger, happier and Dance Psychology: the science of dance and dancers. And in this episode, he talks about how different movements and dance forms impact the brain, how long you need to dance to sharpen your mind, what research has shown about the impact of dance on the symptoms of Parkinson’s and how dance can improve attention spans and even your kids’ grades.