Like other forms of cardio exercise, dancing seems to have mood and mind benefits. A 2007 study found that hip hop dancing improved energy, buoyed mood and lowered stress in ways similar to aerobic exercise.

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A more recent study, published earlier this year in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, linked dancing to improved “white matter” integrity in the brains of older adults. Your brain’s white matter can be thought of as its connective tissue. That tissue tends to break down gradually as we age, which leads to a loss of processing speed and the thinking and memory problems that arise later in life, says Agnieszka Burzynska, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Colorado State University and that study’s first author.

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Burzynska and her colleagues looked at white matter changes among older adults engaged in regular walking, stretching or dancing programs. White matter integrity declined among the walkers and stretchers, but improved among those who danced three days a week for six months. “We saw this benefit in one area of the brain, not everywhere, and our findings are preliminary,” she says. But the early results are promising.

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Dancing also seems to encourage social bonding and what psychologists call “self-other merging.” Like chatting with a stranger and finding out you both attended the same school or grew up in the same neighborhood, moving and grooving in rhythm with others lights up brain pathways that blur the barriers your mind erects between yourself and a stranger, and so helps you feel a sense of connection and sameness, suggests a study from the University of Oxford.

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Source: http://time.com/4828793/dancing-dance-aerobic-exercise/