Good news for music addicts and musicians like me!
According to research that has been published in Neurobiology of Aging, music may have a beneficial influence on our aging process. Scientists came to this conclusion by doing experiments with young and old musicians and with people who hardly or never played an instrument.
Musicians of an older age were able to respond faster and better on audio tests with speech than the persons that were still young but never played an instrument. Research suggests that playing an instrument during most of your life has a big influence on your nervous system, which will be better able to process sound and speech on an older age.
Read more about this research on the following pages:
- Scientas.nl – Muziek beïnvloedt ons verouderingsproces (Dutch)
— English version via Google Translate - ScienceDirect – Musical experience offsets age-related delays in neural timing
Also related to this subject is a post I linked to in September 2010: