Systematic Review of Dance Versus Exercise for Cognitive Impairment

209 randomized controlled trials involving 3,773 participants were analyzed to compare dance with other exercise modalities for individuals with mild cognitive impairment and dementia. The network meta-analysis assessed outcomes including global cognition, working memory, attention, physical performance, and mood. The study, authored by Ye Zhao, was published as a PDF in 2026.

Use Cases

• Compare the Surface Under the Cumulative Ranking Curve (SUCRA) values for dance versus other modalities on the MoCA test for global cognition.
• Analyze the standardized mean differences reported for dance interventions on psychological wellbeing outcomes like mood.
• Rank exercise modalities based on network meta-analysis results for physical performance measures such as mobility.

Strengths

• Analysis is based on a systematic review of 209 randomized controlled trials.
• The dataset includes results from 3,773 total participants across the reviewed studies.
• The study employs a network meta-analysis methodology to compare multiple interventions.

Limitations

• The dataset is a single 120.9 KB PDF file, not a structured, machine-readable data table.
• Several favorable ranking results for dance are noted as being driven by single studies, indicating potential evidence sparsity.
• The underlying raw trial data is not provided, limiting secondary analysis to the reported summary statistics.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Ye Zhao.

Collection Method

Systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials from five databases.

Time Range

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Freshness

The file was last updated in March 2026.

Geography

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