You love music. Music offers a soundtrack to many moments in your life, from the most tedious (cleaning while listening to hit the road jack) to getting dumped at an indie music concert at what sounds like “Mr. Kitten doesn’t live here anymore”, music makes our life less mundane and more worthwhile. Music gives life color and depth in ways no other human inception can.
A new study, has shown that apart from bringing joy and inciting enchanting emotions in people, music has another power. The study published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that people exposed to music training early in their life bear with them music’s positive impact through old age, allowing their brains to retain its plasticity with regard to sound processing.
The study focused on how early life music training allows people to better process sounds when older, a demanding mental process that is found to deteriorate with aging. 44 adults ages 55 to 75 were asked to listened to the syllable “da” and then scientists measured their brain’s reaction to it. Those adults who’ve been training in music while young were faster to respond to the sound than those who didn’t receive any formal music training early in life.
While the reaction difference between those who had music training and those who didn’t was a matter of millisecond, scientists argue it is an important discovery in how we can keep mental processes in older people sharp and properly functioning.
Perhaps you should finally take those guitar lessons, dad was telling you about?