Someone recently asked me what it was like to begin playing the cello as I turned 70 years old—without prior training. Taking a split-second to think about it, I replied, “It’s excruciatingly hard, but immensely satisfying.” Like most things, it’s complicated.
It turns out that learning to play a musical instrument is a brain-stimulating activity. It provides novelty, complexity, and problem-solving, a crucial triad of ingredients for maintaining brain fitness while also checking the boxes for fun, meaningfulness, satisfaction, and sometimes social interaction.
Playing music on an instrument, or even on your phone’s playlist, might also work like medicine, according to Barbara Minton, Ph.D., a psychologist, musician, and neuroscientist who focuses on the intersection of music, neuroscience, emotional healing, and wellness. She pointed me to a recent journal article studying the association between music-related leisure activities and dementia risk. The study, based on more than 10,000 adults over age 70, “… suggests music activities may be an accessible strategy for maintaining cognitive health in older adults, though causation cannot be established.” What’s more, the study indicated that “Always listening to music was associated with a 39% reduced dementia risk and better global cognition and memory scores.” So you can benefit from listening to music, even if you can’t play a note on an instrument!
Minton is currently exploring how the brain and the autonomic nervous system are affected by music, based on current neuroscience. In a recent talk, she indicated that using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies, “Even if you are just sitting still listening to music, the motor area of your brain is activating.… When you listen to Bach, your brain just activates across so many dimensions.” She cautions that music won’t help if sleep, nutrition, and exercise aren’t adequate.
Playing a Musical Instrument
Listening to music is obviously a plus, but I took it to the next level. While I thought about taking up the cello, an instrument I’d loved for decades, I didn’t begin until I found evidence that an older brain is fully capable of learning to play a musical instrument. As a psychologist, I realized that I could combine my wish to make music with stimulating my brain—and entertain myself in retirement.
Playing the cello involves eye-hand coordination, timing, differentiation of sounds, and the pure physicality of carrying around a near body-sized wooden object, daunting for a beginner. The ability to focus without distraction and learning to read music require determination. The very complexity of these combined efforts actually stimulates neuronal production. I was up for the challenge.
Beyond the aesthetic benefits, such as the delightful sound of drawing the bow across a string and producing a deep, resonating sound (when I hit the right note, of course), I also knew, as a psychologist reviewing the latest neuroscience literature, that music has the potential to enhance cognitive functioning.
What exactly happens in the brain of someone playing a musical instrument? For the first time in human history, we can actually answer that question. Thanks to fMRI, a technique that directly measures the blood flow in the brain, you can see exactly which areas of the brain light up when you attach electrodes to a volunteer’s head while they play a musical instrument.
Remarkably, research findings indicate that multiple parts of the brain light up, particularly activation in the prefrontal and frontal cortex, and, as it turns out, the more sites affected, the better it is for cognitive functioning. After midlife, there’s a bonus—both sides of the brain become better integrated, more interdependent, and functionally intertwined, thus further enhancing brain performance. This process is known as bilaterality.
There is mounting evidence that playing music, or even listening to it, can delay or reverse the onset of normal age-related memory problems in older adults. Not only is neuron production increased, but connections between these cells, called dendrites, continue to multiply. Instead of the decline that those of us who are boomers or beyond imagined we might need to deal with, we can expect cognitive strengthening!
How Music Is Foundational
Music is one of our oldest forms of communication. It resonates with life itself. Like a heartbeat, music provides a rhythm that is uniquely comforting. This is why all cultures, going back to our cave-dwelling ancestors, have used flutes and drums, dances and song, to convey stories, emotions, history, religion, and so much more.
The ability to reflect on life and enjoy memories from long ago is a hallmark of our species. It has always been this way from the beginning of human time. Evocative of positive and meaningful feelings, music provides a powerful avenue through which we remember past events.
For example, if you were a child of the ’50s and ’60s, you could listen to any music from that era and probably remember what you were doing at that moment and, often, the person with whom you shared the experience. Perhaps a song by Elvis, the Beatles, or Bob Dylan would take you back to that moment and place, giving you access to long-buried memories of who you were at that time. It might evoke sweetness and also the angst of teenage drama. More than that, it may have reflected your unique history and culture, cemented in time. It has the capacity to touch deeply. According to Minton, music serves as a social, emotional communication device. And as a bonus, it releases oxytocin.[1]
When I initially considered playing the cello, I thought, “If not now, then when?” Only later, when I researched what would eventually become The Vintage Years, did I really understand the full extent of the cognitive benefits related to music.
