Childhood music lessons could pay off decades later – even for those who no longer play an instrument – by keeping the mind sharper as people age, according to a preliminary study published by the American Psychological Association.
The study recruited 70 healthy adults aged between 60 and 83, who were divided into three groups based on their levels of musical experience: those with no musical training; with one to nine years of musical study; or with at least ten years of musical training. All participants had similar levels of education and fitness, and none displayed any evidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
All of the musicians were amateurs who began playing an instrument at about ten years of age. More than half played the piano; the rest played other stringed instruments, woodwind, brass or percussion instruments.
The musicians who had studied 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 statistically significantly 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.
Half of the high-level musicians still played an instrument at the time of the study, but performed no better on the cognitive tests than the other advanced musicians who had stopped playing years earlier. This suggests that the duration of musical study was more important than whether musicians continued playing at an advanced age.
“Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging,” said lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, PhD. “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.”
Whilst much research has been conducted on the cognitive benefits of musical activity by children, this is the first study to examine whether those benefits can extend across a lifetime.
The brain functions measured by the tests typically decline as the body ages, with more dramatic deterioration in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. The results of the study suggest a strong predictive effect of high musical activity throughout the lifespan on preserved cognitive functioning in advanced age.
According to Hanna-Plady, previous research as well as these study results indicate that both the age at which musical participation starts, as well as the length of time the studies continue, are 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.”
Since the preliminary study was correlational, and therefore unable to conclusively link higher cognitive performance to years of musical study, Hanna-Pladdy says that more research is needed to explore that possible link.
Source: American Psychological Association (APA)