Music is food for the brain
Older individuals, who spent a significant amount of time throughout life playing a musical instrument, perform better on some cognitive tests than individuals who did not play an instrument, according to a report published in the journal Neuropsychology last month.
A study conducted by Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist in Emory’s Department of Neurology, and cognitive psychologist Alicia MacKay, PhD, is the first study to examine whether those benefits can extend across a lifetime.
“Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of ageing,” said Dr Hanna-Pladdy.
“Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older,” she said.
About 70 individuals aged 60 to 83 participated in the study and were divided into three groups. The participants either had no musical training, one to nine years of musical study or at least 10 years of musical training.
All of the participants had similar levels of education and fitness, and didn’t show any evidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
Cognitive performance was measured by testing brain functions that typically decline as the body ages, and more dramatically deteriorates in neurodegenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The high-level musicians, who had studied music the longest, performed the best on the cognitive tests, followed by the low-level musicians and non-musicians, revealing a trend relating to years of musical practice.
The high-level musicians had significant higher scores than the non-musicians on cognitive tests relating to visuospatial memory, naming objects and cognitive flexibility, or the brain’s ability to adapt to new information.
Dr Hanna-Pladdy concluded years of musical participation and the age of acquisition were critical.
“There are crucial periods in brain plasticity that enhance learning, which may make it easier to learn a musical instrument before a certain age, and thus may have a larger impact on brain development,” she said.
