14 DAY TRIAL // Investigators from the Northwestern University Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory (ANL) say that people who took music classes and those who've practiced a musical instrument exhibit lower levels of age-related hearing loss later on in life.
All those hours of work and practice apparently have a beneficial effect on the way the human brain works. This is not the first time that such a link has been demonstrated, investigators explain.
The new investigation was carried out on a group of 87 test subjects, who had their neural responses to sounds recorded and analyzed. This is done by measuring how the electric potential of nerve cells changes in the presence of stimuli such as sounds, tastes and so on.
This study was proposed by ANL PhD candidate and lead author Alexandra Parbery-Clark. She says that both young and old musicians were asked to participate, in order to confirm the team's hypothesis.
An additional group of participants was used as a control. The second group was made up of both young and old non-musicians, people who had no musical training and played no musical instruments.
Details of the new investigation were published in the December 2011 online issue of the esteemed scientific journal Neurobiology of Aging. “We found that neural aging is less in the musician population,” Parbery-Clark wrote in the paper.
Before the actual study began, all participants were put through a series of tests meant to determine if they had normal hearing. They then had electrodes attached to their heads, while researchers played back movies featuring both subtitles and sounds.
In the group of musicians, researchers discovered very similar neural response timing, regardless of age. In the control group, young non-musicians displayed better timing than their older counterparts.
“We are not talking about people passively listening to music, but those who actively learn musical instruments. [It’s] just like you are not going to get physically fit watching sports,” the team leader adds.
Most importantly, the researchers determined that the neural response timing in older musicians appeared to have remained still since they were very young. This stagnation could not be attributed to other factors except musical training.