Playing music as a child leads to sharper mind as we get older
A new study claims to have found an unusual link between having a musical childhood and sharper thinking as we get older.
According to a research paper from the University of Edinburgh, people with more experience of playing a musical instrument as a child showed greater lifetime improvement on a test of cognitive ability than those with less or no experience.
Researchers found that this was the case even when accounting for their socio-economic status, years of education, childhood cognitive ability, and their health in senior years.
Despite the results of the study, professor emeritus Ian Deary, formerly director of the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the university, said, “We have to emphasise that the association we found between instrument-playing and lifetime cognitive improvement was small, and that we cannot prove that the former caused the latter.”
“However, as we and others search for the many small effects that might contribute toward some people’s brains ageing more healthily than others, these results are worth following up.”
Out of the study’s 366 participants, 117 reported a level of experience with playing an instrument between childhood and adolescence.
The most commonly played instrument was the piano, with other participants having experience with the accordion, guitar, violin and even bagpipes.
The participants were tested on a series of mental and physical functions, as well as retaking the standardised cognitive ability test each took as an 11-year-old as part of the Scottish Mental Survey of 1947.
The university said the findings provided fresh evidence that playing an instrument is associated with small but detectable cognitive benefits over a lifetime.
Judith Okely, now a lecturer in psychology at Napier University, said, “These results add to the evidence that activities that are mentally challenging, such as learning to play a musical instrument, might be associated with better thinking skills.”
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