Music

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.

The so-called music therapy has shown promise in some earlier studies, showing a profound effect on human body and psyche.

Music’s pleasurable effects
Taking the music therapy’s findings further, McGill University researchers have discovered that listening to music, be it rock, jazz, or classical, releases feel-good neurotransmitter in the brain that plays a key role in setting good moods.

The chemical called dopamine is released at moments of peak enjoyment, the researchers found.

"The girls have kind of just caught up with boys," study author Elisabeth Henderson of Harvard Medical School in Boston told Reuters Health.

Depending on the volume as well as the duration of exposure, harsh noise damages the sensory cells present in the cochlea of the ear, resulting in hearing loss.

“Accumulated effects of exposure [to too-loud music] may cause hearing deficits eventually. Noise-induced damage might not be evident by 12 to 19 years of age, but might become increasingly evident in the mid-20s.”, Henderson stated.

The study details