Learning music may help you live longer--study

According to the researchers of a new study, learning music can offset negative effects of growing old by making brain more adaptive to ageing, the Daily Mail reports.

Study co-author Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in the United States, said, “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.

“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.

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

Study details and revelations
For their study, the researchers analyzed 18 musicians and 19 non-musicians in the ages 45 to 65 for speech in noise, auditory working memory, visual working memory and auditory temporal processing.

It was found that musicians who started playing instruments at the age of 9 or before scored better than non-musicians in all the groups except visual working memory, where both the groups showed identical abilities.

Findings of the study appear online in the journal ‘PLoS One.’

A plausible explanation
Researchers explained, the ability to extract meaningful sounds from a complex soundscape and remembering sound sequences sharpens key auditory skills.

Lead researcher Kraus said, “The neural enhancements we see in musically-trained individuals are not just an amplifying or "volume knob" effect.

"Playing music engages their ability to extract relevant patterns, including the sound of their own instrument, harmonies and rhythms."

Interestingly, music training "fine-tunes" the nervous system.

She added, "Sound is the stock in trade of the musician in much the same way that a painter of portraits is keenly attuned to the visual attributes of the paint that will convey his or her subject.

"If the materials that you work with are sound, then it is reasonable to suppose that all of your faculties involved with taking it in, holding it in memory and relating physically to it should be sharpened.

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