Can Music Save Us From Cognitive Decline?

Let’s stay sharp in old age

Old people will soon be the new trend.

Instead of parks filled with children, we’ll see them filled with 60+ younglings.

More people will live to reach old age while fewer will become teenagers.

The age pyramid is inverting which means that there would be fewer youngsters to support the older ones.

And with age comes a health decline so it’s imperative to be less of a burden and maintain our physical and mental health as much as we can for our and other’s sake.

Music is one of those tools that will delay the decline of our mental processes and even enhance them. Here’s how we can take advantage of it from now until our last breath.

How do brain plasticity and gray matter change over time?

Our brain’s ability to change and adapt in response to experiences, learning, and environmental factors is called brain plasticity.

This allows us to continually form new neural connections and reorganize existing ones throughout our lives.

But sadly, this ability deteriorates over time.

As we get older, this plasticity decreases but it doesn’t disappear.

Older adults may require more repetition or longer periods of training to learn new information or skills, but they are still capable of doing so (Bernard & Seidler, 2012). And different areas of the brain may have different rates of plasticity, so it’s not like everything declines at the same time and at the same rate (Bier & Belleville, 2010).

Brain plasticity is closely related to changes in gray matter volume.

As we form new neural connections and strengthen existing ones, we increase gray matter volume in specific brain regions. Thus, when we age this volume declines which includes neurons and their connections.

Although it’s a normal process of aging, we can still do something about it, especially if we engage in mentally stimulating activities.

We can not only maintain our gray matter volume, but we can even increase it in certain areas of the brain (Erickson, Leckie, & Weinstein, 2014).

Music education should become a public policy priority

A study at the University of Geneve focused on assessing the changes in older adults’ brains and behavior after 6 months of music interventions.

Healthy people aged between 62 and 78 from Germany and Switzerland that had no formal music training participated in this experiment. They received 1-hour weekly music training (either piano lessons or analytical music listening) and were asked to practice at least 30 minutes at home 5 days a week for 6 months. 132 participants were tested with MRI scans (while doing a musical memory task) and 15 psychometric tests (cognitive and sensorimotor).

The study is the first of its kind to investigate the effects of music training on gray matter volume plasticity and auditory working memory changes in healthy older adults.

The results were fascinating:

• Music training leads to an increase in gray matter volume in several regions of the brain which led to an increase in working memory performance. It has a positive effect on executive function benefits and may buffer against age-related cognitive decline effects.
• Comparing the piano group with the music listening group, the study revealed that the gray matter volume in the primary auditory cortex of the piano group increased significantly, while the music listening group didn’t show any significant changes in gray matter volume. In other words, playing the piano led to structural changes in the brain.
• Overall, participants’ performance improved by 6% on average.

Overall, engaging in piano lessons protects against the decay of the brain, and maintains the size of important brain regions such as the primary auditory cortex and prefrontal cortex associated with working memory and audio perception skills.

A side note: An increase in gray matter volume in the primary auditory cortex has been linked to several benefits like improved auditory perception (better sound localization, discrimination of speech sounds, etc.), better language skills (vocabulary, grammar), and increased attention (more able to sustain their focus on a task).

So just after 6 months of training non-musicians were able to positively enhance their brains. Imagine doing it for longer!

Given the results of this study, investing in public policies with musical education can have significant benefits for older adults, including promoting brain plasticity, mental health, independence, and well-being. And stimulating activities at a younger age, including music education, may also be beneficial in preventing cognitive decline later in life.

Thus, public policies that prioritize music education, both for younger and older individuals, can have important implications for promoting healthy aging and cognitive function.

What about musically trained people?

Another study looked at 70 healthy older adults between the ages of 60 and 83 and evaluated their cognitive (or mental) performance using various tests.

They were divided into three groups based on their musical activity: non-musicians, low-activity musicians (1–9 years of experience), and high-activity musicians (>10 years of experience).

The results were insightful:

• High-activity musicians performed better than non-musicians on tests of nonverbal memory (recalling visual information like colors), naming (retrieving words from memory like names of objects), and executive processes (cognitive functions that allow us to plan, monitor, and adjust our behavior like switching between tasks) in advanced age.
• The years of musical activity and the age at which people start playing an instrument strongly predict cognitive performance. Early musical training, particularly during critical periods of brain development, lead to long-lasting cognitive benefits in later life.

Overall, the study suggests that playing a musical instrument for at least 10 years throughout your lifespan can have a positive impact on cognitive functioning in advanced age.

The takeaway

We’ll inevitably get older and our brains will feel the consequences.

But it doesn’t have to be a steep decline.

Music is there to help us along the way.

It can help slow down this decline if we invest our time in it. And not only delay the decline but even enhance certain areas of our brain!

Music gives as much as we dedicate ourselves to it.

Now that you’ve read about the benefits of music training on our aging brain, would you consider musical training for yourself or your children?

Remember, music lessons can transform your brain at any age.

Consider signing up to become a Medium member. It’s just $5 a month, and you’ll have unlimited access to articles from amazing writers worldwide.

You can also subscribe to my newsletter about all sound and music-related topics called Sound Awareness.