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Subscribe to RSSAll those years of playing an instrument, practicing scales, and rehearsing regularly can payoff in midlife and beyond, new research finds. The advantage musicians have may well be between their ears.
This study found that people with four or more decades of musical training appear to have sharper thinking and hearing skills than their less musically inclined peers. Better yet, these benefits seem to buffer against some age-related memory and auditory declines later in life.
In the experiment, published in the May 11 issue of PLoS One, scientists tested 18 musicians and 19 non-musicians (ages 45 to 65) who all had normal hearing. They measured their ability to pick up speech in a noisy place, which becomes harder as you get older, and is a skill that other research has shown to be improved in younger adults (ages 18 to 30) with musical experience.
In addition, scientists evaluated participants auditory and visual working memory after they heard something or saw an image on a computer, and also measured their auditory temporal processing, or how quickly their ears could correctly detect a particular tone at different hearing levels.
Musicians were better able to hear in more challenging noise environments and also had significantly better auditory working memory. Non-musicians could only perform at similar levels in tests of visual working memory.
Researchers were surprised to find in musicians that "the effects on hearing speech in noise, working memory, and temporal processing were strong and not subtle," says neurobiologist Nina Kraus, PhD, director of the auditory neuroscience lab at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and the study's lead author.
Although the musicians in this study played the piano, violin, cello, and various brass or woodwind instruments, Kraus suspects similar effects would be seen in those with other musical talents from electric guitar to drums.
"Music fine-tunes the nervous system," explains Kraus. In other words, musical training helps sharpen all the faculties involved with taking in sounds, holding them in memory, and relating to them physically. "Music experience has a profound effect on how we interact with the world through our hearing," she says.
That's good news for older adults with extensive musical backgrounds, whose nervous systems have been shaped by their lifelong experience in making music. It has formed more "sound-to-meaning connections," suggests Kraus, and that ultimately affects how our hearing works in everyday listening situations.
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I'm not so sure about this report. My husband is a musician, has been for over 50 years, and his memory is no where as good as mine. I'm a numbers person, love math, true music is mathematical progressions but not the same as solving math problems. Since I am around musicians everyday this report seems inaccurate, none of them have the memory that this article says they should have.
This doesn't say they have better memory overall, it says they better process sounds in a noisy environment, and working memory i both a visual and an auditory way. It says very specifically they only performed better on the auditory tests. While I am sure you really rock your math problems, your reading comprehension appears to be challenged.
I'm inclined to think the researcher will find a career playing electric guitar or drums will not be all that conducive to better hearing later in the player's life.
Also doesn't take into account the stoner / drunk muscian and how drugs and alcohol use skew things like hearing, memory retention, etc. later in life, particularly among rocker, loud music playing, electrified instrument type musicians.
That's sort of true but many use ear plugs. Drum cymbals in particular are outright painful to be too close to and people do this because it hurts, not necessarily out of concern for hearing loss.
You're stereotyping some musicians there - many rockers don't abuse substances anymore than the next guy and often abstain altogether. Myself included.
The saying is Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll, not Sex, Drugs and Vivaldi. The end of the music spectrum that's geared to younger audiences does tend to be more chemically enhanced.
Yes that's changed to a degree and yes, musicians - of which I am one also and I too have a keen sense of hearing - are smarter and more proactive with regard to hearing protection etc. Many rockers still use and abuse quite frequently...geez just look at how many heroin ODs and deaths the music industry has experienced by grunge/alternative rockers in the past decade or so.
A musician for 30 years, I don't find this the least bit surprising. I hear noises far sooner than my wife. I can hear the laundry machine beep two floors away even when the TV is on in the floor in between.
Those who appreciate music are already one intelligence step ahead of most. Wonder if they took that into account?
I teach music and I don't have to wait to see the results. All my students regularly make the honor rolls and pass the standardized tests with room to spare. They are also better at basic problem solving (and causing for that matter) and abstract reasoning. Music touches every part of the learning process.
When it comes to comparisons between types of musicians, I would argue that percussionists would excel at different tasks from other types of musicians. Percussion is primarily about meter and time, not tonality the way other instruments are. Even so I'm sure that drummers would still score better than non musical people at hearing through noise. You could test this if you could actually find a middle aged drummer with normal hearing!
I do wonder, however, if the people in this study who were musicians would have still scored better even if they had never been trained? Is it the training or do some people simply excel at these tasks, ultimately leading to musical ability? I have met plenty of people who simply cannot follow rhythm and who favor simplistic music over more complicated arrangements. Perhaps some people just have a head for music?
I was in band in school even though I wasn't very good. But I do like music and singing. I always amaze people with how good my hearing is. In fact I'm amazed too. I worked for 18 years in a print shop and it could be fairly noisy. The last year I worked there I still had perfect hearing on my hearing test.
When I tell a story or something people always ask, "How do you remember that."
Too bad having good hearing doesn't make you rich.
Safe to say Ozzy Osbourne probably wasn't part of the study group....
I have noticed, even after years of being a heavy metal drummer / musician, & definite hearing loss, oddly enough, I can pick out individual voices in a crowd better than my wife. I would bet that her hearing is better than mine though. I think there is something to this study.
I'm not surprised. It's relatively rare to hear about elderly musicians afflicted with severe memory loss or Alzheimers-related disease. It's typically physical injuries, ailments, or deterioration than end musical careers.
The ancient Greeks understood this and considered training in music to be as fundamental as training in math and science.
I also don't think the style of music is particularly relevent. Music that appears very abstract or random on the surface still expresses logical relationships. Recognizing those relationships is what the brain finds fascinating about listening and never seems to tire of.
I've met a couple of people in my life who claimed to have no use for music, but I've always been suspicious of them ( as I am with people who say they don't like chocolate!)
I am simply a musician, as far as I can tell I have always been a musician. From my earliest memories as a child I appreciated music. I have gone from picking up my first guitar at age 6, and plucking out a simple melody on one string to playing several instruments, I write, record, mix, master, produce. When I take breaks and set down my guitar for periods of time, I am somehow not myself, something is missing. When writing a song I hear the music in my head, and it goes from simple guitar to what ever instruments I start to hear in my head. I have the tools to get that out and making what is in my head real... I can promise you, I hear subtle tones way better than most people I know, I manipulate them at will. Just applying simple EQ to a song takes being able to hear the frequencie changes etc. There is a life long training thing that developes hearing etc. I believe that music has given me many many gifts. I believe that direct and subtle abilities that other people who haven't had the training are definitely developed... I am a 54 year old musician from blues to jazz and I know that what you use is developed what you use gets stronger...musicians use their ears and minds in kind of a different focused way...so naturally it gets stronger.... hope that opinion helps.