Childhood piano lessons
Making music when you were young - whether it was piano lessons, singing in a choir or even playing in a band – is likely to have given you an advantage in the way you interpret sounds.
Researchers from Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in New York compared brain responses from young and old musicians and non-musicians in an attempt to assess whether learning to read and play music might have a permanent effect on the brain. The older study participants who were classified as musicians did better on tests than their non-musical contemporaries and they were also just as quick and accurate at encoding the sound as the younger study participants. This, say the researchers, shows that how you experience sound – the ways in which you are taught to listen and interpret it, for example, as you are during music training – has an effect on how your nervous system functions.
Musicians were classified as being individuals who had started musical training before the age of nine and played a minimum of twice a week more or less consistently throughout their lives,” says study author Professor Nina Kruas. Non-musicians had three years or less of training.
This is not the first time musical knowledge and training has been linked with advantages in old age – the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory has done other research that suggests it may also help prevent memory loss and enhance a person’s ability to discern speech in a noisy setting.