New findings suggest that people who regularly play a musical instrument have sharper brains.
Dr Inez Jentzsch of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, UK, and colleagues measured the performance of musicians during mental tasks. They divided 56 musicians and non-musicians into four groups, depending on to their lifetime hours of practicing a musical instrument.
Each participant was then tested for two hours on reaction times in simple mental tasks such as the Stroop test, and various physiological measurements. The Stroop test requires participants to name the colour of a series of words, which themselves are the names of different colours. The word might say "blue" but be printed in red, so the participant must say "red".
In the test, the more-practiced musicians has a faster response time than those with little or no musical training, and they were no less accurate despite being faster. The researchers believe that people who practice playing musical instruments tend to have faster brains because they are used to noticing and correcting mistakes more quickly than other people.
Details of the study are published in the journal Neuropsychologia. The authors say that playing music may help protect against mental decline, whether from age or disease.
Dr Jentzsch said: "This result suggests that higher levels of musical training might result in more efficient information processing in general and confirms earlier reports indicating a positive link between mental speed and musical ability.
"Musical activity could be used as an effective intervention to slow, stop or even reverse age- or illness-related decline in mental functioning. It cannot only immensely enrich our lives, but the associated benefits for our physical and mental functioning could be even more far-reaching than proposed in our and previous research."
Jentzsch, I. et al. Improved effectiveness of performance monitoring in amateur instrumental musicians. Neuropsychologia September 19 2013 doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.09.025
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