Learning to play a musical instrument keeps the brain young

Learning to play a sound on a musical instrument can be a good tool to fight off age-related cognitive declines, new study suggests. And all this is due to the brain’s amazing ability to rewire itself and recover after sustaining injuries.

Several previous studies have shown that music has a positive effect on the brain but a recently conducted experiment from Baycrest Health Sciences shows that learning how to play a note on a musical instrument can be a valid exercise for those looking to ward off age-related cognitive decline.

Scientists, publishing their results in the Journal of Neuroscience, say that this is due to the brain’s ability to rewire itself and recuperate after injuries. Practically, learning to play a sound on a musical instrument alters the brain waves in a way that improves a person’s listening and hearing skills over a short time frame. So listening to music is not enough, researchers say, in order to get the full benefits that music has over our brains.

“Music has been known to have beneficial effects on the brain, but there has been limited understanding into what about music makes a difference,” says Dr. Bernhard Ross, senior scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute (RRI) and senior author on the study. “This is the first study demonstrating that learning the fine movement needed to reproduce a sound on an instrument changes the brain’s perception of sound in a way that is not seen when listening to music.”

Dr. Bernhard Ross was prompted into his research by the positive outcomes of using music to rehabilitate stroke patients. For his study, the doctor recorded the brain waves of 32 young participants, first recorded while they listened to bell-like sounds from a Tibetan singing bowl.

After listening to the recording, half of the participants were provided the Tibetan singing bowl and asked to recreate the same sounds and rhythm by striking it and the other half recreated the sound by pressing a key on a computer keypad.

“It has been hypothesized that the act of playing music requires many brain systems to work together, such as the hearing, motor and perception systems,” says Dr. Ross, who is also a medical biophysics professor at the University of Toronto. “This study was the first time we saw direct changes in the brain after one session, demonstrating that the action of creating music leads to a strong change in brain activity.”

The study’s next steps involve analyzing recovery between stroke patients with musical training compared to physiotherapy and the impact of musical training on the brains of older adults.

The scientists argue that with additional funding, they could develop techniques which use music as a tool to heal stroke patients and those that have suffered other brain injuries.