MUSICAL EDUCATION: PROTECTS THE BRAIN

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The ability to understand the speeches often decreases with age: Previous studies suggest that this could be caused by a weakening of the central auditory system of the brain, responsible for a person's ability to analyze the sequences of words and identify the acoustic characteristics of the speech.

Bidelman Gavin, of the University of Memphis (Tennessee, USA), and colleagues enrolled 20 elderly (aged 55-75 years), 10 of whom were musicians, healthy, in a study in which each subject was made to wear a headset in a controlled laboratory environment and has been asked to identify speech sounds random.

Some of the sounds were single vowel sounds, others are more ambiguous, as a mix of two sounds that poses a bigger challenge for the auditory processing capabilities to properly categorize the sound of two vowel sounds.
During the test cycles, the researchers recorded neural activity of each participant using electroencephalography (EEG). This technique of measuring brain imaging in measuring very accurately the exact timing of the electrical activity that occurs in the brain in response to external stimuli. This is displayed as waveforms on the computer screen. Researchers use this technology to study how the brain makes sense of our acoustic environment and how complex cognitive functions grow old.
The researchers observed that the brain responses of musicians showed a neurophysiological processing more efficient and robust multi-level auditory processing.

Noting that: "The musicians showed a match closer between neural activity and perceptual performance" the study's authors argue that: "We have shown that music training allows the brain auditory aging better, retaining recognition vocalepiù long."

Source: Worldhealth

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