OTTAWA, July 29 — The benefits of music for the brain are well established. But how well can the musical mind withstand old age, given that aging is inevitably accompanied by a more or less significant decline in cognitive performance? A study published in the journal PLOS One set out to investigate.

Aging brings a number of physical and cognitive changes, even in individuals with no specific pathologies. Older people often worry about forgetting where their keys are, or the title of a movie they’ve recently seen on TV. But researchers in Canada claim that these memory lapses are less likely to occur when it comes to music. The scientists have discovered that older people are just as likely as younger people to remember melodies they have heard in the past.

The scientists demonstrated this after conducting an experiment at a Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra concert, and another in the laboratory.

Around a hundred volunteers, aged between 20 and 80, were asked to listen to three different musical extracts. These were Mozart’s "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and two pieces of music specially conceived for the needs of this study.

One was tonal—ie, a musical composition based on a specific tonal center or key—the other was atonal, and therefore more surprising to listen to. During the experiment, participants were asked to press a button as soon as they heard a musical theme that sounded familiar to them.

It turned out that older people were just as able as younger participants to identify the different musical themes. They found it easier to recognize the rhythmic motif of Mozart’s "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” than that of either the tonal or atonal music, as did their younger counterparts. "Overall, we find no main effect of age when tasked with recognizing a theme in a piece of music, nor any significant interaction of age with familiarity, setting or musical training,” the researchers write in their paper.

The findings of this study suggest that musical memories are long-lasting in the brain. They appear to be more resistant to cerebral aging, which could explain why people with Alzheimer’s disease have no trouble remembering the songs they learned when they were young.

As such, it could be wise to build up your musical memory throughout your life, by listening to music or playing an instrument. And there’s no age limit. It has been shown that people who start practicing music as adults benefit cognitively, just like those who learned to play an instrument when they were younger. — ETX Studio