Analysis: learning to play music turns out to be more effective than screen-based activities in maintaining brain health
By Fionnuala Rogers, Cardiff University
Modern medicine, education and improved living standards mean that we are living longer than our ancestors. By 2030, one in six people in the world will be aged over 60 years and the number of over-60s will reach 2.1 billion (double what it is today) by 2050.
Although a testimony to our evolutionary success, our extended lifespans come at a cost, namely an increased prevalence of age-related neurological diseases. Age-related illnesses is one of the biggest challenges we face today as a species and dementia is predicted to be the costliest health condition by 2030. While dementia may be an age-related disorder, it is not an inevitable part of ageing and finding ways to stretch our "window of wellness" is now a priority for researchers.
What happens to our mental health with age?
Cognition is the term used to describe the mental processes (conscious and unconscious) involved in everything that we do. This takes in interpreting sights, sounds and smells, to choosing where to direct our attention, to mentally working with information to formulate a decision, to recalling events that happened five seconds or five years ago.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Ray D'Arcy Show, interview with David Eagleman about his book The Brain: The Story of You
Normal ageing is characterised by a slowing of mental processes and subtle changes in cognition. Small cognitive changes may not dramatically impact a person's ability to live a normal, fulfilling life. But in some cases, serious neurological conditions can develop. Notably, normal ageing is associated with a decline in cognitive abilities known as "executive functions".
Executive functions are integral to living independently, socialising and having a good quality of life. Even simple tasks that we take for granted each day such as dressing ourselves, getting to work on time and planning meals rely on our executive functions.
Executive functions are often dubbed "the canary in the coal mine" because they are the first to be impacted when things are not going right in our lives, such as when we are sleep-deprived, sad, lonely or in poor physical condition.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, neuroscientist and psychologist Dr Sabina Brennan on how to maintain and improve brain health.
They are also the first cognitive abilities to be impacted in ageing. In fact, recent research suggests that executive functions begin to decline as early as in our 30s. Considering their importance in everyday living, preserving our executive functions is critical, and perhaps we should be prioritising their preservation earlier than previously thought.
Why screen-based solutions don't work
You may be thinking at this stage "there is probably an app for that". But cognitive psychologists now generally agree that screen-based trainings do not seem to translate to any real-world benefits when it comes to cognitive functioning. One reason why "brain training" apps may be unsuccessful is that they do not simulate the complexity of real-world problems. Even the simplest of tasks, like preparing a meal, require the coordination of multiple sensory modalities and physical movements, which simultaneously implicate a variety of different brain networks.
Our brains evolved for movement rather than for thinking so that we could navigate our environments to successfully find food and mates (man didn’t pass on his genes by simply sitting around like a Rodin sculpture). In other words, there would be no need for thought without movement. For this reason, some cognitive psychologists believe our ability to think (and thus our executive functions) evolved as an extension of the brain’s motor control system.
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From RTÉ 2fm's Jennifer Zamparelli, science journalist, Melissa Hogenboom on taking exercise to boost your brain
To maintain our executive functions in old age, it seems that whole-brain activities which involve coordinating multiple sensory inputs and physical movements may be more effective than screen-based trainings. One such activity is learning to play a musical instrument.
How can playing a musical instrument benefit cognition?
Playing a musical instrument is a complex activity which simultaneously engages many different areas of the brain including the auditory, visual, somatosensory and motor systems. An important difference between playing music and other art forms is that it is manifested over time and requires a stable beat. Timing mechanisms required for playing music have been shown to directly involve brain structures responsible for motor control and executive functions.
Additionally, playing an instrument provides immediate auditory feedback as you constantly monitor and update your hand movements based on the sounds that you are producing. This directly targets the brain's reward system, which could speed up the process of "fine-tuning" executive functions required for playing.
From TED-Ed, educator Anita Collins on how playing an instrument benefits your brain and explains the fireworks that go off in musicians' brains when they play
Both clinical research and studies comparing musicians and non-musicians have demonstrated the benefits of playing an instrument on the brain. Music-based therapies have been successfully used to improve both motor and cognitive symptoms in stroke, traumatic brain injury, Parkinsons Disease and Huntington's Disease (HD) patients. For example, in our lab at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre, drumming was shown to improve executive functions and white matter volume in HD patients,
Musicians versus non-musicians
A wealth of research has shown differences between the brains of musicians and non-musicians. Extended periods of time spent practicing an instrument physically changes the structure of the brain, particularly in the regions responsible for auditory and motor processing, and also in the organisation of white matter connections between different brain regions.
As neurologist Oliver Sachs once wrote "anatomists today would be hard put to identify the brain of a visual artist, a writer or a mathematician – but they would recognize the brain of a professional musician without moment’s hesitation."
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, the positive effect music has on brain health for people with dementia
With regards to ageing, older musicians tend to out-perform non-musicians on tests of memory, spatial-reasoning and executive functions. Although the link between these cognitive advantages and structural brain differences are still not well understood, the research suggests that music training might be an optimal activity for maintaining executive functions in older age.
The benefits for older adults of learning to play music
A common misconception is that we can only learn new skills when we are children, and that the brain loses its "plasticity" or ability to adapt and learn as we get older. However, this has been debunked by studies showing structural brain changes in older adults who spent a number of weeks learning a new skill such as juggling, dancing or playing piano compared to a control group. Although it may take a little longer, older adults maintain the capacity to rewire their brains through learning new sensory-motor skills. This means that you can still learn to play an instrument no matter what your age.
As part of my research, I conducted a meta-analysis, where I pooled data from 13 different studies teaching elderly non-musicians how to play an instrument. These studies involved randomly assigning older adults with little-to-no musical experience to either a group that received musical training (for example, piano lessons) or a control group that received no music training for a fixed period of time (e.g., six months).
Perhaps music deserves greater status in our society – not just as a "food-for-the-soul" luxury - but as a key ingredient for cognitive longevity
The two groups underwent cognitive testing before and after the training period in each study. Overall, a statistically significant improvement in executive functions, as well as increased processing speed, was found for the music groups compared to the control groups across the 13 studies.
Furthermore, recent neuro-imaging research from Germany and Switzerland has reported that six months of piano training may have "neuro-protective benefits" as some regions of grey and white matter structure were preserved in a piano group compared to the control group who showed normal age-related brain deterioration.
With the global demographic shifting towards an ageing population, we have a collective responsibility to try to preserve our health and cognitive faculties for as long as we can. Learning new skills which combine sensory and motor skills may be ideal for stimulating and maintaining neural networks important for living a fulfilling and independent life. Perhaps music deserves greater status in our society – not just as a "food-for-the-soul" luxury - but as a key ingredient for cognitive longevity.
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Fionnuala Rogers is a PhD student at the Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) at Cardiff University.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
