Stimulating your brain with music and language
Studies have found that new knowledge and pastimes can help you fend off dementia
If you’re worried about developing dementia, I recommend learning to play a musical instrument or speak a second language. Based on my research into memory, along with other studies, these activities seem to make your brain operate more efficiently, which should help you stave off memory loss for longer.
Recently, I conducted a small study showing that musicians and people flu- ent in two languages were able to complete tasks involving working memory with less effort than it took others.
Working memory is the ability to keep things in mind, such as remembering a phone number, a list of instructions, or doing mental math. We’ve known for a long time that musicians and bilingual people have better working memories, but we’ve never understood why. I scanned the brains of the people I tested and found that musicians and bilingual people seemed to have access to different areas in their brains when calling to mind a detail like a phone number.
Musicians performed the best overall, and they didn’t need to be virtuosos to experience an improvement.
It also didn’t matter which instrument they played.
I’m not surprised because music has a powerful emotional effect that could tie in with memory in some way.
Many people with dementia who have lost the ability to speak can still sing, and recall the words to a particularly meaningful song.
Bilingual people in my study didn’t remember things any faster than the control group.
Apossible explanation: people who speak two languages may take longer to process sounds since the information is run through two language “libraries” in their brains rather than just one.
(During my study, the brains of bilinguals showed greater signs of activation in areas that are known for speech comprehension.)
But the scans still showed they were able to complete tasks us- ing less brain power than people who only spoke one language and didn’t play an instrument.
It’s quite an amazing reminder that biology isn’t destiny — there’s so much we can do to shape our health and especially to help prevent degenerative brain diseases such as dementia.
Although the 41 people I studied were young, there’s lots of evidence that stimulating your brain at any age is helpful. If you’re middle aged or newly retired, now would be the perfect time to pick up a musical instrument or study a language.
You’ll likely meet new people and do more socializing, something you may have dropped in the busy years when raising kids and building a career took up all your time. That’s important because socialization also helps protect your brain against dementia.
If you don’t like music very much or hate learning languages, then stay tuned. Next, I’m planning to compare the memory powers of artists (painters, sculptors, etc.) against musicians.
I suspect that there are many activities that can cause your brain to work more efficiently, if you keep pursuing them regularly.
Dr. Claude Alain is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at Baycrest Health Sciences’ Rotman Research Institute. Doctors’ Notes is a weekly column by members of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.