舞蹈动作治疗提升健康老年人 HRV：Frontiers in Psychology 一项前后测研究

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Health Psychology

• 1. Universita degli Studi di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

• 2. Universidad de Tarapaca, Arica, Chile

Abstract

A decline in cardiac autonomic control, as assessed by heart rate variability (HRV), is considered a natural component of ageing. However, physical exercise, and dancing including dance-based activities, can be effective in preventing/reversing this decline. Aim of this study was to verify whether Dance Movement Therapy (DMT), which uses dance, movement, body awareness and embodied interpersonal communication to promote well-being, improves vagally-mediated HRV, which has been linked to physical and mental health, in a sample of people aged over 65. To this purpose, HRV-derived vagal and sympathetic indices, obtained by electrocardiogram signals, as well as tonic skin conductance level, which is a marker of tonic sympathetic activity, recorded during two rest sessions that preceded and followed a 8-week DMT activity, were compared through repeated measures analysis of variance. Results showed post- DMT changes in HRV-derived vagal parameters (root mean square of the successive differences between RR intervals (RMSSD), standard deviation of the beat-to-beat changes in RR intervals (short-term HRV) (SD1) and high frequency power (HF)) in the time, frequency and nonlinear domains. More specifically, the root mean square of the successive differences between RR intervals (RMSSD), the high frequency power (HF) and the standard deviation of the beat-to-beat changes in RR intervals (short-term HRV) (SD1) were higher in the post- than pre-DMT session. Conversely, no changes were found in HRV sympathetic indices nor in skin conductance level. The post-DMT improvement in vagally-mediated HRV in healthy old people is a new finding and we argue that this beneficial effect may be due to DMT’s ability to enhance social interaction and promote well-being.

Keywords

active ageing, cardiac function, dance movement therapy, Heart rate variability, Signal processing, Well-being

Received

12 February 2026

Accepted

21 September 2026

Copyright

© 2026 Sebastiani, Daoudagh, Ignesti, Raglianti and Paradisi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Paolo Paradisi

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