Physical activity is well known to be beneficial to elderlys health, and it may also improve cognitive function, but its mechanisms is still unclear. Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) is a popular dancing gameplay having two factors activating physical and cognitive condition. During this gameplay, multimodal ingegration is neede by using sensory inputs (visual and rhythmic auditory cues) leading to a coordinated motor response. It is reported that the superior parietal lob and superior temporal gyrus, the center of sensory-motor integration, were differntly activated during the gameplay in the youth by fNIRS. (Tachibana et al., 2011). Another report shows that the game activates the middle temporal gyrus and the frontopolar cortex, which has a different role in each but has a relative relationships between these cortical areas (Ono et al., Neuroimage, 2014). Therefore we hypothesized that a regularly programmed long-lasting DDR training for the elderly would prevent cognitive impairment and keep physical balance ability. Three weeks trial examination for the community-dwelling elderly ( 60-85 ages), no difference was found in the physical function measured by functional reach, gait velocity in a 10-meter-walk test, Timed Up and Go and lower-limb muscle strength before and after the training, but timing accuracy of the dancing step increased 1.3~3 times. In the cognitive function, the visuospatial ability, constructional ability and attentional function were improved, especially in the one with lower cognitive function at the initial level before training. In addition, the questionnaire using visual analog scale found that most of the elderly have felt a strong motivation to get in the regularly programmed gameplay.
These results strongly suggested the possibility of cognitive impairment prevention in the elderly. We will discuss the possibility of the regularly programmed long-lasting DDR training by cognitive and physical assessments together with fNIRS in the elderly having with different daily environments.