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Courtesy of Ricardo Vasquez
Musical
Activity May Improve Cognitive Aging
April 26, 2011 – A study conducted by Brenda
Hanna-Pladdy, PhD, a clinical
neuropsychologist in Emory’s Department of
Neurology, and cognitive psychologist Alicia
MacKay, PhD, found that older individuals
who spent a significant amount of time
throughout life playing a musical instrument
perform better on some cognitive tests than
individuals who did not play an instrument.
The findings were published in the April
journal Neuropsychology.
While much research has been done to
determine the cognitive benefits of musical
activity by children, this is the first
study to examine whether those benefits can
extend across a lifetime.
“Musical activity throughout life may serve
as a challenging cognitive exercise, making
your brain fitter and more capable of
accommodating the challenges of aging,” said
lead researcher Hanna-Pladdy. “Since
studying an instrument requires years of
practice and learning, it may create
alternate connections in the brain that
could compensate for cognitive declines as
we get older.”
The study enrolled 70 individuals age 60-83
who were divided into three groups. The
participants either had no musical training,
one to nine years of musical study or at
least ten years of musical training. All of
the participants had similar levels of
education and fitness, and didn’t show any
evidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
Cognitive performance was measured by testing
brain functions that typically decline as
the body ages, and more dramatically
deteriorate in neurodegenerative conditions
such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The high-level musicians who had studied the
longest performed the best on the cognitive
tests, followed by the low-level musicians
and non-musicians, revealing a trend
relating to years of musical practice.
The high-level musicians had statistically
significant higher scores than the
non-musicians on cognitive tests relating to
visuospatial memory, naming objects and
cognitive flexibility, or the brain’s
ability to adapt to new information.
“Based on previous research and our study
results, we believe that both the years of
musical participation and the age of
acquisition are critical,” Hanna-Pladdy
says.
“There are crucial periods in brain
plasticity that enhance learning, which may
make it easier to learn a musical instrument
before a certain age and thus may have a
larger impact on brain
development.”
The preliminary study was correlational,
meaning that the higher cognitive
performance of the musicians couldn’t be
conclusively linked to their years of
musical study. Hanna-Pladdy, who has
conducted additional studies on the subject,
says more research is needed to explore that
possible link.
The study was conducted with at the
University of Kansas Medical Center. At the
time of the study, Hanna-Pladdy was an
assistant professor in psychiatry at the
University of Kansas Medical Center and a
research faculty member of the Landon Center
on Aging University of Kansas Medical
Center. MacKay, also a former research
assistant at the University of Kansas
Medical Center, is now an assistant
professor of psychology at Tulsa Community
College.
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