Striking a Chord
by Mind Over Matter V14:
MUSIC-MAKING CAN PROTECT YOUR BRAIN AS YOU AGE
Music can boost brain health and function in a variety of ways. Research has linked music with improved quality of life, enhanced cognitive function, reduced stress, lower risk of dementia, and more. In the last issue of Mind Over Matter®, we examined the many brain benefits of listening to music. In this article, we look at the research on music-making, with a particular focus on the long-term effects of playing a musical instrument.
MUSIC-MAKING PROVIDES BRAIN BENEFITS, REGARDLESS OF AGE
Musical practice (i.e., musical training and performance) is one of the activities that is considered to contribute to cognitive reserve. Playing a musical instrument involves multiple sensory and motor systems and requires a wide variety of higher-level cognitive processes. Studies have shown that children who receive musical training may enjoy cognitive advantages in the near-term (i.e., while they are still children), and that these cognitive advantages can continue into older age.
LEARNING TO PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG BENEFITS YOUR COGNITIVE FUNCTION IN MANY WAYS AS YOU AGE, INCLUDING PROTECTING AGAINST MEMORY LOSS AND COGNITIVE DECLINE, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT CONTINUE MAKING MUSIC INTO ADULTHOOD.
And, if you missed out on childhood music lessons, it is not too late to reap the benefits of music-making for your brain. Learning to play an instrument in adolescence or adulthood provides cognitive benefits, too.
A meta-analysis of 13 studies – conducted by Rafael Román-Caballero and colleagues and published in 2018 in PLOS ONE – examined the benefits of musical practice among cognitively normal participants aged 59 and older. Overall, the collective evidence suggested an association between musical practice and better cognitive functioning in older age. Notably, these benefits were experienced by individuals who engaged in long-term music-making throughout their lives, as well as by individuals who had participated in short music training programs in later life.
“The results we observed in older musicians were quite broad and covered a wide array of cognitive functions. And the findings suggested a transfer effect. That means that improvements in certain functions appear to have a positive influence on other functions that were not directly trained. For example, improvements in auditory processing don’t just help with musical abilities but apply to speech processing as well,” said Mr. Román-Caballero, a PhD candidate at the University of Granada in Spain.
“That makes music training unique as a cognitive training tool. Many cognitive training programs have experienced difficulty obtaining results beyond improvements in just the tasks that were directly trained in the program.”
A more recent study, conducted by Dr. Jamie Romeiser and colleagues, looked at the association between musical instrument engagement at different stages of life – in adolescence and/or adulthood – and episodic memory in late life. The researchers analyzed 60 years of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which had collected survey data from more than 10,000 participants multiple times since 1957.
In particular, the researchers ascertained the participants’ musical instrument engagement in high school, categorizing participants into three groups: no musical participation, moderate participation, or high participation. Musical engagement in adulthood was assessed as well, through surveys completed by participants at ages 35, 55, and 65.
Those who reported engaging in music-making at all three time periods were assigned to the “continuous play” group, while those who reported instrument engagement at one point or another were assigned to the “intermittent play” group. Anyone who reported no musical instrument engagement at any of the three points was categorized in the “no play” group. In addition, nearly 6,000 of the participants completed assessments of their episodic memory when they were approximately 65 and 72 years old, using immediate and delayed recall tasks.
THE RESEARCHERS FOUND THAT HIGH INVOLVEMENT IN MUSIC-MAKING DURING HIGH SCHOOL AND CONTINUOUS MUSIC-MAKING IN ADULTHOOD WERE EACH INDEPENDENTLY ASSOCIATED WITH HIGHER MEMORY SCORES AT THE AGE OF 65, AFTER ADJUSTING FOR ANY POTENTIALLY CONFOUNDING VARIABLES.
An examination of memory decline from age 65 to 72 revealed that the benefits of high-school music exposure decreased over time, although those participants categorized in the “high-participation” group still had significantly higher memory scores at the age of 72 compared to the “no-participation” group. These findings were published in June 2021 in PLOS ONE.
“Our study suggests there may not be a critical period of time for learning to play an instrument to experience cognitive benefit. Yes, childhood may be an important period for reaping brain benefits of music-making. However, we found that engaging in music-making in adulthood was associated with a protective effect for episodic memory, regardless of whether a participant was engaged in music-making in [her or his] youth or not,” explained Dr. Romeiser, a biostatistician and a member of the voluntary faculty at Stony Brook University in the U.S.
Our study adds to a greater body of evidence that suggests there are late-life benefits from playing music as an adult, even if you never played in childhood.
LEISURE MUSIC-MAKING MAY BE MORE AGE-PROTECTIVE THAN PROFESSIONAL
A group of researchers in the U.S. and Germany used an interesting approach to investigate the potential age-protecting effect of music-making on the brain. Dr. Lars Rogenmoser and colleagues reviewed brain scans and calculated “BrainAGE” scores for each participant and compared the scores across three groups with differing lifetime doses of music-making activities: professional musicians, amateur musicians, and non-musicians.
A BrainAGE score represents the discrepancy between a person’s chronological age and the “age of their brain”; a negative score reflects an age-decelerating brain (namely, a brain that is aging more slowly than what would be expected normally at that chronological age).
All three groups were found to have negative scores as follows: non-musicians -0.48, amateur musicians -4.51, and professional musicians -3.70. Note that compared to non-musicians, musicians (whether professional or amateur) had lower BrainAGE scores, suggesting that music-making had a positive effect on slowing aging of the brain.
YOU MIGHT HAVE EXPECTED THAT SINCE MUSIC-MAKING HELPS PROTECT THE BRAIN FROM AGING, MORE MUSIC-MAKING WOULD BE BETTER. YET, THE AMATEUR MUSICIANS HAD LOWER SCORES THAN THE PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS, INDICATING A STRONGER AGE-PROTECTIVE EFFECT FOR THE AMATEURS.
These results were published in January 2018 in Brain Structure & Function.
“Our findings indicate that music-making overall is associated with age-protective effects for the brain, although more so when it is done as a leisure or extracurricular activity rather than as a main profession. It appears that the beneficial effects of music-making on the brain may not infinitely increase with the intensity of practice,” said Dr. Rogenmoser, currently at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
“Why would amateur music-making be more protective than professional music-making? Perhaps amateur musicians benefit from participating in a variety of leisure activities, rather than intensely focusing heavily on just one activity. Or, it’s possible that professional music-making has stress-related impacts that somewhat diminish the otherwise positive effect of music-making. However, more research is needed before any conclusions can be drawn about the ‘why’ of our interesting discovery.”
THE BRAINS OF MUSICIANS AND NON-MUSICIANS DIFFER
If you think about the complexity of music-making, it is probably not surprising that it has been linked with a myriad of cognitive benefits. Music-making requires intricate coordination and concentrated attention. It involves motor and cognitive functions simultaneously, while also engaging the senses and evoking emotion. It combines skills in auditory and visual perception, pattern recognition, kinesthetic control, and memory. There is a lot occurring when
playing an instrument, and brain scan research has shown that the physical brain itself can change for the better in response.
For example, studies have found that musicians tend to have larger amounts of grey matter volume in certain areas, including the auditory, motor, and visuospatial brain regions, as well as enhancements in white matter volume. Additionally, musicians consistently have been found to have a larger corpus callosum, a major tract of fiber that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
GIVE MUSIC-MAKING A TRY
There are numerous ways that you can integrate music-making into your life as an adult, even if you did not play in your youth. The following are some ideas:
· Grab a pot from the kitchen or buy a drum and participate in a drum circle or class (Remo offers a free online drum circle each week: https://remo.com/experience/post/online-weekly-community-drum-circle).
· Look for a music teacher near you or online who offers individual music lessons for adults.
· Check out YouTube – several generous musically-gifted people are sharing what they know to help others learn to play a wide range of instruments for free.
· Join a musical group. Group music-making infuses the experience with the benefits of social connection, one of the “six pillars” of brain health. (Of course, music-making alone or in a group provides mental stimulation, another of the six pillars.) Most communities have a choir you could join, and many have instrumental musical groups as well. For example:
· The New Horizons Band Guelph (www.nhbguelph.com) is a not-for-profit organization that provides various music-making opportunities for adults in and around Guelph, Ontario, including concert bands, brass and woodwind ensembles, funk-bucket groups, swing bands, and jazz improvisation groups. They have continued to offer programming during the pandemic via Zoom.
· School of Rock (www.schoolofrock.com) is a company with locations around that world that offer a program for adults with or without previous musical experience. Participants form musical groups and receive private lessons, as well as practice together each week, eventually giving a live performance.