Learning Music or Speaking Another Language Leads to More Efficient Brain

Summary: According to researchers, bilingual people and trained musicians utilize fewer resources in their brains while completing working memory tasks. As their brains require less effort to perform tasks, researchers speculate this could protect them from the onset of cognitive decline. Source: Baycrest Center for Geriatric Care. Whether you learn to play a musical instrument or speak another language, you’re training your brain to be more efficient, suggests a Baycrest study. Researchers found that musicians and people who are bilingual utilized fewer brain resources when completing a working memory task, according to recently published findings in the journal, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Individuals with either a musical or bilingual background activated different brain networks and showed less brain activity than people who only spoke one language and didn’t have formal music training to complete the task, according to the study’s findings. “These findings show that musicians and bilinguals require less effort to perform the same task, which could also protect them against cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia,” says Dr. Claude Alain, first author of the paper and senior scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute. “Our results also demonstrated that a person’s experiences, whether it’s learning how to play a musical instrument or another language, can shape how the brain functions and which networks are used.” Musicians and people who are bilingual have long been shown to have a better working memory, the ability to keep things in mind, such as remembering a phone number, a list of instructions or doing mental math. But it remains a mystery as to why this is the case. This is the first brain imaging study looking at all three groups and this work uncovers how these activities boost different parts of the brain among individuals, adds […]

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