Music Can Literally Grow Your Brain

"A 2018 literature review in the journal Dementia Neuropsychologia, summarizing the results of 24 different studies, concluded that exposing Alzheimer’s patients to music, especially familiar music, improved both mood and memory in dementia patients. Scientists involved in the research hypothesize that musical memories are often preserved in dementia patients, and that activating those memories can help access associated memories.

But does playing a musical instrument make you smarter?

We can conclude from the above research that listening to music doesn’t necessarily make you smarter, but can elevate your mood and arousal and help you temporarily perform better, and even slow cognitive decline later in life.

Another review article in Dementia Neuropsychologia, by Rodrigues et al, “Musical training, neuroplasticity and cognition,” shows that learning to play a musical instrument, then practicing that instrument, can actually grow parts of your brain associated with perceiving and playing music (corpus callosum, cerebellum, hippocampus, temporal neocortex ). Rodrigues et al go on to point out that numerous studies suggest that the physical changes to the brain have functional significance, with trained musicians exhibiting elevated performance, relative to non-musicians, in cognitive tasks such as visuospatial processing and visual memory.

One more thing, before you take up an instrument to grow your brain

The foregoing studies strongly suggest that you can grow your brain, improve cognitive skills, and delay cognitive decline by regularly playing a musical instrument. But, if you are really motivated to beef up your brain and cognitive skills, a broad range of studies in brain plasticity, summarized by Dr. Lawrence Katz suggests that you should not stick with one instrument, but constantly teach yourself to play unfamiliar instruments, so that you expose your brain to constant novelty."

Read the complete article available at Psychology Today!

Reflection:

Do you play a musical instrument?

#Music #Brain #Research #MoodRegulation