Comparing the biopsychosocial impact of group singing and yoga activities in older adults living with Parkinson's disease.

Research on group singing has demonstrated numerous benefits to wellbeing including boosts in mood, increases in social bonding, and reductions in stress. These benefits can be achieved by individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), a group that is especially at risk for social isolation given the typical decline in mobility and communication that accompanies neuromotor degeneration. Several mechanisms of action have been proposed to explain the benefits to wellbeing, with one prominent hypothesis emphasizing that interpersonal movement synchrony enhances feelings of social bonding. In the current study, we explore this hypothesis by comparing group singing to yoga, another popular activity among people living with PD that confers a temporary boost in wellbeing. Critically, yoga tends to have low levels of interpersonal movement synchrony compared with group singing that requires precise temporal alignment and the shared goal of synchronization. Twenty individuals living with PD were recruited from pre-existing community programs: ten from a weekly choir, and ten from a weekly yoga class. We compared these activities through a biopsychosocial lens, including acute measurements of mood, social bonding, cortisol, and oxytocin before and after the group activity. The results revealed that while both activities enhanced mood and decreased cortisol, group singing was associated with greater overall social closeness and significant increases in oxytocin. Although the absence of demographic data represents a limitation, the findings nonetheless offer valuable insight into the potential of group singing to foster social bonds and enhance wellbeing, indicating interpersonal movement synchrony and the release of oxytocin as possible mechanisms driving this effect.