A recent finding by researchers at the Baycrest Health Sciences discovered a crucial link between playing a musical instrument and helping older adults retain their listening skills and warding off age-related cognitive decline. It turns out that a musician's brain has an edge over the process of ageing. ??
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This finding could lead to the development of brain rehabilitation interventions through musical training.
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Senior author Bernhard Ross noted that music has been known to have beneficial effects on the brain, but there has been limited understanding of what about music makes a difference.
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The study involved 32 young, healthy adults who had normal hearing and no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders. The brain waves of participants were first recorded while they listened to bell-like sounds from a Tibetan singing bowl (a small bell struck with a wooden mallet to create sounds). After listening to the recording, half of the participants were provided with 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.
The study's next steps involve analysing recovery between stroke patients with musical training compared to physiotherapy and the impact of musical training on the brains of older adults.
The study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.