Ballet dancers' brains adapt to stop them feeling dizzy

NewsBot · Sep 28, 2013

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Press Release:
Scientists have discovered differences in the brain structure of ballet dancers that may help them avoid feeling dizzy when they perform pirouettes.

The research suggests that years of training can enable dancers to suppress signals from the balance organs in the inner ear.

The findings, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, could help to improve treatment for patients with chronic dizziness. Around one in four people experience this condition at some time in their lives.

Normally, the feeling of dizziness stems from the vestibular organs in the inner ear. These fluid-filled chambers sense rotation of the head through tiny hairs that sense the fluid moving. After turning around rapidly, the fluid continues to move, which can make you feel like you’re still spinning.

Ballet dancers can perform multiple pirouettes with little or no feeling of dizziness. The findings show that this feat isn’t just down to spotting, a technique dancers use that involves rapidly moving the head to fix their gaze on the same spot as much as possible.

Researchers at Imperial College London recruited 29 female ballet dancers and, as a comparison group, 20 female rowers whose age and fitness levels matched the dancers’.

The volunteers were spun around in a chair in a dark room. They were asked to turn a handle in time with how quickly they felt like they were still spinning after they had stopped. The researchers also measured eye reflexes triggered by input from the vestibular organs. Later, they examined the participants’ brain structure with MRI scans.

In dancers, both the eye reflexes and their perception of spinning lasted a shorter time than in the rowers.

Dr Barry Seemungal, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial, said: “Dizziness, which is the feeling that we are moving when in fact we are still, is a common problem. I see a lot of patients who have suffered from dizziness for a long time. Ballet dancers seem to be able to train themselves not to get dizzy, so we wondered whether we could use the same principles to help our patients.”

The brain scans revealed differences between the groups in two parts of the brain: an area in the cerebellum where sensory input from the vestibular organs is processed and in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the perception of dizziness.

The area in the cerebellum was smaller in dancers. Dr Seemungal thinks this is because dancers would be better off not using their vestibular systems, relying instead on highly co-ordinated pre-programmed movements.

“It’s not useful for a ballet dancer to feel dizzy or off balance. Their brains adapt over years of training to suppress that input. Consequently, the signal going to the brain areas responsible for perception of dizziness in the cerebral cortex is reduced, making dancers resistant to feeling dizzy.

“If we can target that same brain area or monitor it in patients with chronic dizziness, we can begin to understand how to treat them better.”

Another finding in the study may be important for how chronic dizzy patients are tested in the clinic. In the control group, the perception of spinning closely matched the eye reflexes triggered by vestibular signals, but in dancers, the two were uncoupled.

“This shows that the sensation of spinning is separate from the reflexes that make your eyes move back and forth,” Dr Seemungal said. “In many clinics, it’s common to only measure the reflexes, meaning that when these tests come back normal the patient is told that there is nothing wrong. But that’s only half the story. You need to look at tests that assess both reflex and sensation.”
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NewsBot · Sep 28, 2013

The Neuroanatomical Correlates of Training-Related Perceptuo-Reflex Uncoupling in Dancers
Y Nigmatullina et al.
Cerebral Cortex, 27 September 2013. doi:10.1093/cercor/bht266

Sensory input evokes low-order reflexes and higher-order perceptual responses. Vestibular stimulation elicits vestibular-ocular reflex (VOR) and self-motion perception (e.g., vertigo) whose response durations are normally equal. Adaptation to repeated whole-body rotations, for example, ballet training, is known to reduce vestibular responses. We investigated the neuroanatomical correlates of vestibular perceptuo-reflex adaptation in ballet dancers and controls. Dancers' vestibular-reflex and perceptual responses to whole-body yaw-plane step rotations were: (1) Briefer and (2) uncorrelated (controls' reflex and perception were correlated). Voxel-based morphometry showed a selective gray matter (GM) reduction in dancers' vestibular cerebellum correlating with ballet experience. Dancers' vestibular cerebellar GM density reduction was related to shorter perceptual responses (i.e. positively correlated) but longer VOR duration (negatively correlated). Contrastingly, controls' vestibular cerebellar GM density negatively correlated with perception and VOR. Diffusion-tensor imaging showed that cerebral cortex white matter (WM) microstructure correlated with vestibular perception but only in controls. In summary, dancers display vestibular perceptuo-reflex dissociation with the neuronatomical correlate localized to the vestibular cerebellum. Controls' robust vestibular perception correlated with a cortical WM network conspicuously absent in dancers. Since primary vestibular afferents synapse in the vestibular cerebellum, we speculate that a cerebellar gating of perceptual signals to cortical regions mediates the training-related attenuation of vestibular perception and perceptuo-reflex uncoupling.
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wdd · Sep 29, 2013

This ties in nicely with the thread, Why Do We Have a Brain?

NewsBot · May 5, 2018

PUBLIC RELEASE: 4-MAY-2018
Dancer's brains react quickly to changes in music
Dancers' brain functions also display brain frequencies linked to emotion and memory processes

Neuroscience has studied music for decades, and it has been found to activate both the cortical and deeper brain areas. Neuroscience of dance, instead, is a young but quickly growing field.

In her doctoral dissertation, Master of Science Hanna Poikonen developed methods for understanding the processes that dance generates in the cortex at the Cognitive Brain Research Unit of University of Helsinki. In her research project, she compared the brain functions of professional dancers and musicians to people with no experience of dance or music as they watched recordings of a dance piece.

According to the results, the brain activity of the dancers was different from that of musicians and the control group during sudden changes in the music, long-term listening of music and the audio-visual dance performance.

"The dancers' brains reacted more quickly to changes in the music. The change was apparent in the brain as a reflex before the dancer is even aware of it at a conscious level," Poikonen says.

"I also found that dancers displayed stronger synchronisation at the low theta frequency. Theta synchronisation is linked to emotion and memory processes which are central to all interpersonal interaction and self-understanding."

These results support the earlier findings indicating that the auditory and motor cortex of dancers develops in a unique way.

"Studies of professional dancers and musicians have highlighted the importance of multimodal interaction and motor-related brain regions in cerebral processing of dance and music," Poikonen says.

In her research, she used the novel EEG methods that she had developed: event-related potentials to investigate the influence of fast changes of musical features in the brain in a short timescale and changes in phase synchrony between two electrode channels when investigating cortical dynamics during observation of dance and music over a longer timescale.

These methods could be used in the development and assessment of therapy as well.

"The methods could be applied in estimating the efficiency and developing further expressive therapies, such as dance-movement therapy, as a part of holistic treatment plan for conditions such as Parkinson's disease, dementia, autism, and pain and mood disorders."

NewsBot · Jan 24, 2023

Does a visual reference help ballet dancers turn more successfully?
Andrea Schärli, Catherine Haber, André Klostermann
Hum Mov Sci. 2023 Jan 19

In dance, performing multiple rotations around the longitudinal axis is a complex task that can only be accomplished proficiently by highly skilled dancers. However, this extraordinary skill has been investigated sparsely. The few studies to date have focused on the biomechanical analysis of ballet rotations. However, none have investigated the influence of visual information on continuous rotations, such as Fouettés or à la Seconde turns. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the role of a visual reference on balance control and the dance-specific head coordination - spotting - during turning performance of highly skilled ballet dancers. To this end, 12 participants performed 12 Fouettés (females) or à la Seconde turns (males) with and without a visual reference. As dependent measures, we analysed balance control (i.e., supporting foot path length), spotting duration, head isolation, and orientation (i.e., deviation of pelvis from the front). A linear mixed model was performed to analyse the influence of the visual conditions overall and over the continued performance of 12 consecutive rotations. The results revealed that overall, path length was significantly smaller in the condition without a visual reference. Spotting duration and head isolation did not differ significantly between conditions. Moreover, dancers oriented themselves better towards the front in the condition with a visual reference. When looking closer into the progression of performance over each consecutive rotation, highly skilled ballet dancers significantly decreased the supporting foot path length, and improved orientation when turning with a visual reference. On the other hand, without a visual reference, the dancers increased the spotting duration over time. Additionally, dancers increased head isolation towards the end of the turns in both conditions. These findings suggest that a visual reference helps ballet dancers sustain performance of consecutive rotations, mainly in optimising balance control and orientation. Thus, the more rotations a ballet dancer must turn, the more relevant a visual reference becomes for sustaining successful performance.
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Ballet dancers' brains adapt to stop them feeling dizzy

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wdd Well-Known Member

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Ballet dancers' brains adapt to stop them feeling dizzy

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

wdd Well-Known Member

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

NewsBot The Admin that posts the news.

Connective Tissue Gene Variants in Professional Ballet

Height of the Medial Longitudinal Arch During Classical Ballet Steps

ballet Companies

Assessing Readiness for En Pointe in Young Ballet Dancers

The effect of textured ballet shoe insoles on ankle proprioception in dancers

Corticospinal excitability of the ankle extensor muscles is enhanced in ballet dancers

Podiatrist focused on ballet research New to Podiatry Arena

Share This Page

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