The Music That Keeps Dementia At Bay

We have previously addressed the question: Does Music Really Benefit The Brain?

The short answer is “yes”, the longer answer we covered in the above-linked article, and today we will explore another benefit:

Tuning in to lasting cognitive health

Researchers (Dr. Emma Jaffa et al.) investigated the effects of listening to music, playing to music, or both, on cognitive health in older age.

Specifically, the study looked at 10,893 people over the age of 70 with no diagnosis of dementia at the start of the study.

In a nutshell, they found:

• older adults who listened to music after age 70 enjoyed a 39% lower risk of dementia and a 17% lower risk of cognitive impairment.
• those who played a musical instrument had a 35% lower risk of dementia compared with those who rarely or never played, but no additional reduction in risk of cognitive impairment.
• people who both listened to and played music regularly showed a 33% reduction in dementia risk and a 22% reduction in cognitive impairment.

Furthermore, benefits were strongest in those with higher education (16+ years) but showed inconsistent results in the middle education group (12–15 years).

You can find the paper itself, here: What Is the Association Between Music-Related Leisure Activities and Dementia Risk? A Cohort Study

You might be wondering:

• why playing music yields a lower decrease in risk of dementia than listening to it
• why doing both yields an even smaller reduction in dementia risk than listening without playing or playing without listening

That’s very counterintuitive, isn’t it? We might hypothesize that the answer lies in how we go about the activities, and what that means for our brain.

It is quite likely that someone over the age of 70 who regularly plays a musical instrument is not new to doing so; in fact, chances are they learned as a child. This means that for them, playing music is in large part a matter of muscle memory. Which is great, but is very different from actively engaging conscious parts of the brain to do things.

In contrast, it’s quite likely someone over the age of 70 who regularly listens to music is having their brain constantly surprised by whatever the radio station (or streaming service playlist on shuffle) puts up next.

An additional hypothesis (that tags on to that last one) is that someone who regularly listens to music, but is not the one playing, is more likely to be dancing to that music, and we’ve written about that previously:

Dancing vs Parkinson’s Depression ← this article is about a rather fun study, and the results were very predictable (i.e: it helps), and/but the mechanism of action is not necessarily something that people might think of in advance!

Even without dancing, there are other benefits too, though, including engaging our parasympathetic nervous system, which is good for our heart, gut, brain, and general health—especially if we sing or hum along to the music:

The Science Of Sounds ← this also covers the science (yes, science) of mantra meditation vs music

And, for that matter: The Music That Has Painkilling Effects ← and no, it’s not about distraction! As it turns out, listening to pleasurable music activates the brain’s opioid receptors.

In other words, the response is neurologically similar to taking an opioid drug, except that it’s more moderate, so it’s not addictive (and even if it were, then well, it would be a much safer addiction than opioids!)

Want to learn more?

For a deeper dive into this topic, you might like this book that we reviewed a while back:

This Is Your Brain on Music – by Dr. Daniel Levitin

Enjoy!