Scientists have not found a way to prevent Alzheimer's or dementia, but there is research to support the notion that playing music may help seniors build brain power, or "plasticity," which describes the brain's ability to build new neural pathways. Neural pathways are connections that help us learn new things and perform various functions.
Dr. Aniruddh Patel, at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, said that neuroimaging he has studied shows that music involves large areas of both hemispheres of the brain, rather than just isolated areas or "hot spots."
His research has been confined to younger adults, who have more plasticity in their brains, but Patel said he would not be surprised to learn that music helps build brain power in seniors, too."Music is such a complex activity involving the motor system, sensory cognition and emotion in a very deep way," Patel said. "It gets us to practice many mental skills we use in our daily lives, like focused attention and sequencing."
Research conducted by Boston, Mass., neurologist Gottfried Schlaug of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests that playing a musical instrument can promote brain plasticity over a person's lifespan.
Dr. Schlaug, director of the Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Beth Israel, released a research paper this year in a medical trade magazine called The Neuroscientist showing music's potential to suspend or counter the effects of aging.Schlaug's research paper says that only a handful of studies have been done on the effect of music on the aging brain, but those studies showed that musicians had more gray matter volume than nonmusicians in specific areas of the brain. "Thus, musicians appear to be less susceptible to age-related degenerations in the brain, presumably as a result of their daily musical activities," Schlaug wrote.
Schlaug pointed to another study in which participants 75 and older were followed for five years and it was discovered that those who played a musical instrument were less likely to have developed dementia.
"This protective effect of playing music was stronger than those of other cognitive activities such as reading, writing or doing crossword puzzles," he wrote.Dr. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, has seen remarkable evidence of how the brain can build new neuropathways to compensate for damaged or lost brain cells. An article in AARP magazine this spring detailed a mathematician Small examined who continued to get top scores on math tests and score a 140 on an IQ test despite an advanced case of Alzheimer's disease.
"He played the piano, as I recall," Small said. "People tend to compensate. People with a genetic risk for Alzheimer's, their brain recruits additional circuits to fill in."Though there is research to support what music can do for the senior brain, Small said, there is nothing conclusive to show that playing music will help protect an aging brain from dementia.
"I don't know that it will prevent Alzheimer's, but I think music in our lives is wonderful and important," he said.Small has one caveat: Play for pleasure, not perfection, he said.
"For some people, it may be great; for others, it may be stressful," he said.
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