A dance teacher, a neuroscientist, and a group of Alzheimer’s patients meet at a barre.
That’s not the setup for a joke, but rather the basis of a serious pilot study investigating the effects of improvisational dance on people with cognitive impairment.
Christina Hugenschmidt, assistant professor, Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, and Christina Soriano, associate professor of Dance, on the WFU’s Reynolda Campus, are collaborators in a pioneering intervention. They are currently analyzing results of the eight-week pilot with plans to pursue funding for a larger study.
“We saw improvements in balance, compared with the control group, which did not attend the weekly dance classes,” Hugenschmidt said. “We also saw increased mindfulness and empathy, so we believe this intervention can provide physical, mental, and emotional benefits.”
“Dance as an intervention for degenerative neurological conditions, like Parkinson’s disease, has been studied for about a decade,” Soriano noted. “We aren’t aware of anyone else studying Alzheimer’s patients engaged in improvisational dance, that is, is spontaneously creating movement that doesn’t require remembering dance steps.”
Christina Soriano & Dr. Christina Hugenschmidt
Photo Courtesy WFU / Ken Bennett
Surprising Results
Funded by Wake Forest University’s Translational Science Center (TSC) with support from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, the study used measures, such as the Fullerton Balance Scale, to test 20 pairs of Alzheimer’s patients and caregivers before and after the eight sessions. The group was divided into 10 pairs who participated in weekly classes and 10 pairs who followed normal routines.
“You typically build strength, endurance, or skills through repetition,” Hugenschmidt observed. “Improvisational dance improves many of the same factors, but it doesn’t do it by repeating the same movements. The whole point is to make different movements. From a neuroscience perspective, I find that fascinating.”
Hugenschmidt finds the gains in mobility and balance encouraging because interventions for progressively deteriorating diseases are often deemed successful if they can simply maintain function and avoid further decline.
Working with Alzheimer’s Patients
When Hugenschmidt heard Soriano present study findings with Parkinson’s-disease patients at a TSC gathering, she became intrigued by the possibility of using dance with Alzheimer’s patients in the Brain Fitness enrichment classes at the Sticht Center in Winston-Salem.
“It’s actually very cognitively demanding,” Hugenschmidt recalled. “The first time I sat in on her class, I was falling behind her Parkinson’s students. I couldn’t keep up.”
Soriano leads classes with quick verbal prompts designed to elicit self-generated movements, such as asking participants to simulate swimming with their upper body or to move legs in certain patterns. She has begun the process of trademarking the name “IMPROVment” for her technique and created a corresponding website www.improvment.us/#welcome.
“I offered a modified version of my class for the Alzheimer’s group,” Soriano said, “but improvisation is still the core of the paradigm. There are no ‘wrong’ movements, and the class atmosphere is free from judgment.”
Contrasting Perspectives
Hugenschmidt and Soriano recognize that collaborating across science and the humanities in medical research is rare, but they appreciate their differences and have become good friends. A paper they co-authored with Glenna Batson, emerita professor of Physical Therapy at Winston-Salem State University, was published in February 2016 in Frontiers in Neurology.