Playing Instrument Could Protect against Cognitive Aging
A recent study published in PLOS Biology suggests that playing music for many years may help older adults retain their ability to understand speech in noisy environments. The research, led by Claude Alain of the Baycrest Academy for Research and Education in Canada and Yi Du of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, points to enhanced cognitive reserve as a possible explanation.
As people grow older, they often experience a gradual decline in both sensory and mental abilities. These changes in how we perceive and process information are frequently linked to increased brain activity and stronger connections between different areas of the brain. This heightened activity, known as functional connectivity (the statistical relationship in activity across brain regions), is believed to act as a form of compensation. Essentially, the brain recruits extra resources to help older adults perform cognitive tasks more effectively.
Certain lifestyle habits, such as learning music, achieving higher levels of education, or speaking more than one language, can build what scientists call cognitive and brain reserve. This refers to the mental and neurological assets developed over time, which may delay or soften the effects of aging on the brain. According to Cognitive Reserve Theory, people who build up these reserves through life experience tend to perform better mentally as they age. However, researchers still debate how exactly these accumulated benefits from positive lifestyle choices affect the brain’s functioning in older adults.
To investigate this question, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in 25 older musicians, 25 older non-musicians, and 24 young non-musicians who were asked to identify syllables masked by noise sounds. The researchers focused their analysis on neural responses within the auditory dorsal stream, which includes auditory, inferior parietal, dorsal frontal motor, and frontal motor areas, supporting sound-to-action mapping and sensorimotor integration during speech processing.
As predicted, the results revealed reduced age-related declines in speech-in-noise performance among older musicians compared to older non-musicians. During speech-in-noise perception, the older non-musicians showed the typical age-related compensatory increase in functional connectivity in auditory dorsal streams bilaterally (i.e., in both hemispheres of the brain).
By contrast, older musicians exhibited a connectivity pattern in bilateral auditory dorsal streams that resembled young non-musicians, with connectivity strength in the right dorsal stream correlating with speech-in-noise perception. In addition, older musicians exhibited more youth-like spatial pattern of functional connectivity during the task, whereas older non-musicians consistently showed a spatial pattern that deviated from young non-musicians.
Taken together, these findings support the “Hold-Back Upregulation” hypothesis, which posits that cognitive reserve from musical training promotes a more youthful functional connectivity pattern, leading to superior behavioral outcomes. Beyond merely compensating for age-related declines, cognitive reserve may work by maintaining the integrity and functional architecture of neural networks, thereby mitigating the adverse effects of aging on cognitive performance. But due to the study design, it was not possible to determine cause-and-effect relationships between musical training and performance in the perception task.
According to the authors, future studies should further test the “Hold-Back Upregulation” hypothesis using different cognitive tasks, such as memory and attention tasks, and investigate other sources of reserve, such as physical exercise and bilingualism. Eventually, these findings may inform interventions aimed at preserving cognitive function and improving communication outcomes in aging populations.
Dr. Lei Zhang adds, “A positive lifestyle helps older adults cope better with cognitive ageing, and it is never too late to take up, and stick with, a rewarding hobby such as learning an instrument.”
Dr. Yi Du adds, “Just like a well-tuned instrument doesn’t need to be played louder to be heard, the brains of older musicians stay finely tuned thanks to years of training. Our study shows that this musical experience builds cognitive reserve, helping their brains avoid the usual age-related overexertion when trying to understand speech in noisy places.”
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