Forget Brain-Training, Learn an Instrument
We are told we need to keep our brains active as we age, to help stave off cognitive decline and the risk of dementia. A whole industry has grown up around this, and we are urged to buy the latest brain-training apps and books. Yet research has thrown doubt on a lot of the hype surrounding these, with many now dismissed as useless gimmicks.
But there is robust scientifi c evidence which shows that learning to play a musical instrument is not just benefi cial to children: adults benefi t too and it may even be helpful to patients recovering from brain injuries.
Playing a musical instrument is a rich and complex experience that involves integrating information from the senses of vision, hearing, and touch, as well as fi ne movements. Musical training can induce long-lasting changes in the brain. Professional musicians are highly skilled individuals who spend years training, so they provide a natural laboratory in which neuroscientists can study how such changes – called experience- dependent plasticity – occur across their lifespan.
Early brain scanning studies revealed signifi cant diff erences in brain structure between musicians and non- musicians of the same age. For example, the corpus callosum, a massive bundle of nerve fi bres connecting the two sides of the brain, is signifi cantly larger in musicians, and the brain areas involved in movement, hearing, and visuo-spatial abilities also appear to be larger.
Longitudinal studies (which track people over time) have shown that young children who undertake 14 months musical training exhibit signifi cant structural and functional brain changes compared to those who do not. Learning to play a musical instrument not only increases grey matter volume in various brain regions, but also strengthens the long-range connections between those regions. Other research shows that musical training enhances verbal memory, spatial reasoning, and literacy skills: professional musicians usually outperform non-musicians in these areas.
More recently, it has become clear that musical training facilitates the rehabilitation of patients recovering from stroke and other forms of brain damage. It also seems to have a protective eff ect against the onset of dementia.
One problem with commercial brain training products is that they only improve performance on the skills involved; musical training on the other hand has what psychologists refer to as transfer eff ects; in other words, learning to play a musical instrument seems to have a far broader eff ect on the brain and mental function, and improves other abilities that are seemingly unrelated, such as working memory and language.
Learning to play an instrument strengthens the brain in a way that nothing else does, so put down the Sudoku and pick up your ukulele. You know it makes sense.
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