Childhood music lessons could actually pay off decades later by keeping the aging mind sharper, according to a new study by the American Psychological Association.
While past research has shown cognitive benefits of musical activity in children, this is the first study to examine whether those benefits can actually extend across a lifetime.
"Studying an instrument may create alternate connections in the brain which help compensate for the cognitive decline experienced as people age," said lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, PhD.
The study included 70 healthy older adults who were divided into groups based on their level of musical experience. One group had never studied music, the second group had 1-9 years of experience, and the last group had at least 10 years of music training.
Participants in the second two groups were all amateurs, who began playing an instrument at about 10 years old, most of whom no longer played the instrument. More than half played the piano, a quarter played woodwind instruments, such as the clarinet or saxophone, and a small amount played percussion, stringed or brass instruments.
The last group who had the most musical experience performed the best on cognitive tests, followed by the less experienced group and the non-musicians. The high-level musicians performed significantly better than the non-musicians, especially on tests that detected the brain's ability to adapt to new information.
The cognitive tests used in the study detect brain functions that typically decline as people age, and even more drastically diminish in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
Only half of the high-level musicians still played an instrument at the time of study, but they did not perform any better than those who had stopped playing. The results suggested that the duration of musical study was more important than whether musicians continued playing at an advanced age.
