Their brains functioned similarly to younger brains, requiring less energy to focus than older non-musicians’ brains, which needed more to compensate for age-related mental declines. Playing music builds a person’s ‘cognitive reserve,’ akin to a backup system in the brain, which assists in maintaining its efficiency, much like a younger brain, as one ages.

Prolonged music training strengthened the connections between brain regions handling hearing, movement, and speech, facilitating sound processing in challenging situations, such as distinguishing a single voice in a crowd. The researchers’ findings challenged the notion that older brains always need to work harder to offset aging. Regular musical practice, around 12 hours weekly, regardless of skill, can develop a ‘reserve’ that prevents the brain from exerting excess effort unnecessarily.

Dr. Yi Du from the Chinese Academy of Sciences compared well-trained brains to finely tuned instruments, noting that older musicians’ brains remain sharp due to years of practice. The study, published in PLOS Biology, revealed that older adults who never played an instrument displayed increased activity in auditory dorsal stream areas, regions that facilitate processing sounds and linking them to actions. This heightened activity, known as increased task-induced functional connectivity (upregulated TiFC), indicated that these older brains worked harder to counteract cognitive decline related to aging.

Conversely, older musicians showed brain patterns similar to younger non-musicians, with decreased activity in auditory dorsal stream areas. Specifically, less activity in the brain’s right hemisphere correlated with an improved ability to discern words in noisy settings. Older musicians also demonstrated similarities to younger brains in the left precentral gyrus, an area in the frontal lobe responsible for controlling movement, mainly for the body’s right side, such as the right hand or arm.

The left precentral gyrus also aids in planning and executing voluntary movements, like pressing a button or speaking. The researchers highlighted that the declines in both hearing and cognitive abilities weren’t indicative of diseases like Alzheimer’s but were linked to the natural cognitive challenges accompanying ‘normal aging.’ The study included 25 older musicians averaging 65 years old who had played an instrument for at least 32 years. Another 25 older adults with an average age of 66 and two dozen younger non-musicians in their 20s also participated in the research.

All the participants were physically healthy, right-handed, native Mandarin speakers from China who had normal hearing and no neurological issues. Each person listened to four syllables (‘ba,’ ‘da,’ ‘pa,’ ‘ta’) mixed in with loud background sounds at three different noise levels while images of their brain activity were taken by an fMRI machine. Older musicians performed better than older non-musicians in identifying the syllables, especially in less noisy conditions.

Overall, older adults who played music were worse than younger non-musicians but still noticeably better than their peers who never picked up an instrument. The researchers noted that their findings could lead to new brain-boosting therapies that prevent the onset of dementia, such as encouraging music training among seniors. Another study in Imaging Neuroscience backed up the new findings, revealing that it’s never too late to start playing music to boost your brain health.

A team from Kyoto University in Japan found a group of older adults who learned to play music in their 70s performed better on verbal memory tests four years later. The researchers noted that those who kept practicing over those four years did the best on the cognitive tests compared to those who quit after the initial four-month study.