Learning to play a musical instrument can protect your brain from aging, building up a defense against cognitive decline that lasts a lifetime.

Researchers from Canada and China discovered older adults who had spent years playing music were better at understanding speech in noisy environments, like a crowded room, compared to those who didn’t play music.

Their brains worked more like younger people’s brains, needing less energy to focus than older non-musicians’ brains had to use to make up for age-related mental declines.

Playing music was found to build up a person’s ‘cognitive reserve,’ which is like a backup system in the brain.

This reserve helps the brain stay efficient and work more like a younger brain, even as someone grows older.

Years of music training strengthened connections between brain areas that handle hearing, movement, and speech, making it easier to process sounds in tough situations, like when it’s hard to single out one voice in a crowd.

Researchers said their findings debunked the idea that older brains always need to work harder to compensate for aging.

Instead, regularly practicing an instrument for about 12 hours a week, regardless of how well you play, can build up a ‘reserve’ that keeps the brain from having to think too hard unnecessarily.

Older adults who practiced music 12 hours a week showed similar brain activity to younger adults in their 20s (Stock Image)

Older adults playing music had to use less energy to focus on a single voice in a crowded room (Stock Image)

Dr Yi Du from the Chinese Academy of Sciences told BBC Science Focus: ‘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.’

The study published in PLOS Biology revealed that older adults who never practiced a musical instrument showed extra activity in auditory dorsal stream areas, brain regions that work together to help process sounds and connect them to actions.

More activity while listening to sound, known as increased task-induced functional connectivity (upregulated TiFC), suggested that these older brains were working harder to compensate for age-related cognitive decline.

Meanwhile, older musicians displayed brain patterns that were similar to younger people who didn’t practice music, including less activity in auditory dorsal stream areas.

Specifically, showing that less activity in the brain’s right hemisphere was linked to a better to ability to make out words in a noisy room.

Older people who regularly practiced music also had more similarities to younger brains in the left precentral gyrus, an area located in the frontal lobe that controls movement, especially for the right side of your body, like your right hand or arm.

The left precentral gyrus also helps plan and carry out voluntary movements, such as pressing a button or speaking.

The researchers noted that these declines in both hearing and thinking skills weren’t signs of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, but were associated with the natural cognitive strain that comes with ‘normal aging.’

Studies showed that it was never too late to start practicing an instrument in order to build a cognitive reserve (Stock Image)

The study included 25 older musicians with an average age of 65 who 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 took part 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.