While many people
have heard of the pseudoscientific “Mozart effect” on learning, what if
actually learning to play music has an even greater, biological benefit? Many
musicians start learning their instrument from an early age and continue
playing for years to come, spending many hours practicing and playing. As
people age, neural responses to aural stimulation slows down, and may lead to
issues in communication skills. In January, a study by Dr. Parbery-Clarck, Dr.
Nina Kraus and, others published in
Neurobiology of Aging shows
that musical training may alleviate age-related delays in response to audio
stimuli.
Why
might musical training play an important role later in neural response
speed? Musical training requires a
musician to learn to recognize differences in pitch, timbre, and timing— how
high or low a sound is, the ‘voice’ of a sound (think how a gravelly old man
sounds different compared to a young girl’s soprano), and chronological
placement respectively. Dr. Kraus noted in a previous paper that these
components are also used to recognize speech. Pitch and placement are needed to
understand what people say, particularly in more tonal languages, and timbre
helps us distinguish different voices from each other. Music has also been linked to the
adaptability of the brain to learn new tasks and has already been used in speech
and motor therapy for stroke victims. Observing how fast a brain responds to
sounds may shed further light on how musical training affects auditory
responses.
This study looked
at nearly 100 participants. They were divided into four categories: older nonmusicians,
younger nonmusicians, older musicians, and younger musicians. “Younger” people
were 18 to 23 years old, and “Older” people were 43 to 65 years old. Musicians
were defined as individuals who began their musical training before the age of
nine and continued to play at least three times weekly throughout their
lifetimes. The research team
played the speech syllable “da” (chosen for its mix of consonant and vowel
sounds) periodically through headphones for participants during a silent
captioned film of the patients’ choice. The research team then measured brain
responses via electrodes, observing how soon the subcortex responded after the
syllable was played in microseconds.
The researchers
found that older participants had slower responses to speech syllables than
younger participants. However, the older nonmusicians had significantly later
responses than young nonmusicians, while the disparity between older and
younger musicians’ responses were narrower. As the speech syllable transitioned
from the consonant ‘d’ noise to the vowel ‘a’ sound, older musicians actually
had similar response times to younger nonmusicians. The research team concluded
that aging negatively affects the processing of noise, especially consonant
sounds, but also that musical training reduces those effects.
While these
findings are preliminary, previous studies from Dr. Kraus’s laboratory show
that musical training is also linked to reduced hearing and memory loss. The
research team believes their findings should encourage future investigation
into training for keeping neural resilience, the capacity for learning, intact
over a lifetime. Dr. Kraus also noted that the study doesn’t necessarily show
that musicians have a neural timing advantage to every neural response to sound,
but "instead, this study showed that musical experience selectively
affected the timing of sound elements that are important in distinguishing one
consonant from another." For now, musicians take notice— if you spend more
time in the practice room, you might stay sharp in your later years.
Neurobiology of Aging, Available online 9 January 2012.
“Musical experience offsets age-related delays in neural timing” Alexandra
Parbery-Clark, Samira Anderson, Emily Hittner, Nina Kraus http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197458011005471
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