Playing an instrument helps you hear

While some elderly people struggle with their hearing, those who have been life-long musicians have most likely improved their ability to hear in noisy places as they reach old age.

Playing a musical instrument at a young age has its benefits, but researchers say it does not mean your ears can hear better, but rather it comes down to how a musician’s brain works.

In the past, studies have found that learning to play a musical instrument can improve students’ IQ scores, memory and ability to perceive speech in noisy surroundings.

Now a new study from Northwestern University in the United States has found musical training can give more mature musicians the edge when it comes to picking speech out from other sounds.

The study, Musical Experience and the Aging Auditory System, found older musicians (aged 45-65 years old), excel in auditory memory and the ability to hear speech in noisy environments.

“Lifelong musical training appears to confer advantages in at least two important functions known to decline with age – memory and the ability to hear speech in noise,” co-author and director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern, Nina Kraus, said.

“Difficulty hearing speech in noise is among the most common complaints of older adults, but age-related hearing loss only partially accounts for this impediment that can lead to social isolation and depression,” Ms Kraus said.

“It’s well known that adults with virtually the same hearing profile can differ dramatically in their ability to hear speech in noise.”

To try to discover why this happens, researchers tested a group of non-musicians, and a group of musicians on their ability to hear speech in noise, their auditory working memory, their visual working memory and auditory temporal processing.

The musicians scored higher than the non-musicians in every test except visual working memory, where both groups showed similar ability.

“The neural enhancements we see in musically-trained individuals are not just an amplifying of ‘volume knob’ effect,” Ms Kraus said.

“Playing music engages their ability to extract relevant patterns, including the sound of their own instrument, harmonies and rhythms. So music training ‘fine tunes’ the nervous system, in a similar way, perhaps, to fine tuning a piano,” she said.

“Music experience bolsters the elements that combat age-related communication problems.”

However researchers insist it is never too late to start being musical.

In a small study, carried out over nine months, one group of previously non-musical adults aged 60 to 85, received piano lessons, while a similar control group had no piano training.

When the two groups were assessed after six months of intervention, and again after a gap of three months, the piano-playing group showed significantly improved performance in a number of neurological assessments.

Do you play a musical instrument, and if so, has this had any improved effect on your hearing ability?