A new study suggests that senior adults with musical training experience fewer negative effects of aging. The research, published in July 2012 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, showed that older adults who learned music as children, and who played an instrument for a number of years, performed better on cognitive and memory tasks than non-musicians. The musicians scored higher on tests of mental acuity, visual-spatial judgment, verbal memory and recall, and motor dexterity.
Although researchers don’t fully understand the link yet, one theory is that practicing an instrument requires continual brain stimulation, which may lead to better thinking ability later in life.
Full story: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/08/02/musicians-brains-might-have-an-edge-on-aging
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