Physical fitness is considered a major factor contributing to the maintenance of independent living and everyday competence. In line with this notion, it has been shown that several years of amateur dancing experience can exert beneficial effects not only on balance and posture but also on tactile, motor, and cognitive functions in older people. This raises the question of whether an even more extensive schedule of dancing, including competitive tournaments, would further enhance these positive effects. We therefore assessed posture, balance, and reaction times, as well as motor, tactile, and cognitive performance in older expert ballroom dancers with several years of competitive experience. We found substantially better performance in the expert group than in the controls in terms of expertise-related domains like posture, balance, and reaction times. However, there was no generalization of positive effects to those domains that were found to be improved in amateur dancers, such as tactile and cognitive performance, suggesting that there might be an optimal range of intervention intensity to maintain health and independence throughout the human lifespan. 1. Background In addition to a general decline in physical fitness [1], the aging process is accompanied by a progressive decline in perception, motor behavior, cognition, and memory functions [2–4]. Therefore, the preservation of everyday life skills and the maintenance of independent living become increasingly important with advancing age. It is well established that physical fitness is intimately associated with cognitive performance in the elderly [5–9]. Consequently, high levels of physical fitness have been assumed to be a major factor contributing to the maintenance of independent living and everyday competence. One of the basic accomplishments of gerontology is the recognition of the tremendous heterogeneity and interindividual variability in the elderly [10]. Thus, the emergence of age-related decline can be highly variable between individuals [2], and there are notable differences in the interindividual performance of general skills at advanced ages. It seems that, aged individuals can maintain high levels of proficiency in certain domains involving cognitive-motor functions such as golf or piano playing. This gave rise to an intriguing question: how is proficiency in one domain of expertise, like playing piano, associated with performance in general? (for review, see [4]). Older experts show little or no age-related decline in tasks related to their area of expertise, but beyond that they
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