Learning an instrument helps keep brain sharp

FOR many youngsters, practising scales and learning to read music can seem like a chore.

But playing a musical instrument as a child could help to improve thinking skills in later life, researchers have found.

People who played an instrument in their youth saw a greater lifetime improvement in their mental abilities, a study showed.

Researchers questioned 366 people born in 1936, around a third of whom had played a musical instrument.

The piano was the most common, but the range of instruments included the guitar, violin and accordion.

Everyone in the study was given the same tests including arithmetic, spatial awareness and word puzzles, at the ages of 11 and 70.

Those who played a musical instrument saw more of an improvement over the decades.

Experts suspect the effort of learning music may increase the volume of certain parts of the brain. Starting out with more grey matter could mean less is lost in old age, and people remain sharper at the age of 70.

However, the difference between people who played instruments and those who did not was small.

Dr Judith Okely, who led the study at the University of Edinburgh and is now a lecturer at

Napier University, said: ‘These results add to evidence that activities that are mentally challenging, such as learning to play a musical instrument, might be associated with better thinking skills.’

Among the people in the study, all now in their early eighties, 117 played a musical instrument when they were younger. They typically played just one instrument, starting aged 10 on average and giving up around the age of 18.

While most got no further than the beginner stage, the most frequent responses were that they trained for two to five years and typically practised for two to three hours a week.

People who played an instrument showed a greater lifetime improvement in thinking skills even when factors such as their socioeconomic status and years of education were taken into account. Ian Deary, senior author of the study and former director of the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said: ‘The association we found between instrument-playing and lifetime cognitive improvement was small, and 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.’

‘Some ageing more healthily’