She and her collaborators looked at 44 healthy adults ages 55 to 76, measuring electrical activity in a region of the brain that processes sound.Sindyan N. Bhanoo NYT
They found that participants who had four to 14 years of musical training had faster responses to speech sounds than participants without any training — even though no one in the first group had played an instrument for about 40 years.
Dr. Kraus said the study underscored the need for a good musical education. “Our general thinking about education is that it is for our children,” she said. “But in fact we are setting up our children for healthy aging based on what we are able to provide them with now.”
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
"Long-Term Benefits of Music Lessons"
“It didn’t matter what instrument you played, it just mattered that you played,” said Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University and an author of the study, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience."
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19 comments:
The kicker is, once you learn (to play and read sheet music) you never forget.
Pretty hard to determine whether those of a certain mindset are drawn to music lessons and benefit most from them, or whether lessons just confer benefits on those who take them.
In other words, I'd bet that the inquisitive and agile minded decide to confer the benefits of music lessons upon themselves.
I'll believe it when the effect can be reproduced using lab rats.
I ain't no fancy scientist or nothin, but watching my preteens concentrate on getting a particularly difficult piece just right (the Pants kids each play the piano and a brass instrument, quite competently I must add), focusing on it, playing it over and over, identifying the errors that are the source of their trouble, and then experiencing the joy of mastery is well worth the money and the hassle involved with school band and private lessons. I have to imagine their brains emerge from this process with quality improved.
If you can play the accordion like this.....I bet you can text at the same time
Vivaldi on the accordion
True. Once you learn to read sheet music and play an instrument you never forget. You might get rusty but it will come right back.
I ♫believe this ♪true. Because music fits with everything. It is like ♪math♪e♫matics that you can hear ♪ and from that mathematics learn to feel ♪♯the spaces between notes and experience the ♫emo♫tional ache in musical rests.
DBQ - dude was workin'! I like the tonality of Vivaldi on accordion. Who knew?
I inherited an accordion, spent a few days after hurricane Fran learning to play it, but even after a lifetime of playing keyboards I could not get the thing to work - you have to do the breathing with the bellows.
A stomach Steinway player I am not. My father could stroll around like he was from Italy, playing that thing and singing along. Not a trivial instrument to master.
I recommend playing music somehow on something. I never did get any good at it, and it's now clear to me that for some reason I never will, but I doubt that someone with talent enjoys it any more than I do. It's the best thing I ever took up. Better than sex, which I also could use some help with.
Vivaldi on the accordion?
That's just amazing.
The accordion is woefully underrated.
I'm not sure what grade it was, maybe 4th or 5th and we had to learn to play the flutophone. That's when I came to the realization that I was probably going to have to do hard physical labor for a living.
The trombone pretty much makes you tone deaf.
This can be fixed by moving to the baritone, or better yet take up the guitar on your own and to hell with your parents' plans.
Petite Annonce accordian in the mix.
Vivaldi on the accordian. Search for more by this guy.
Bach
Complainte pour Ste Catherine accordian
Excursion à Venise
I imagine taking up an instrument in your later years might help keep your brain flexible. I tried to teach myself piano several years ago. Been thinking of trying again. I think a lot :)
I have not played the trombone since high school. It would probably take months to get my embrasure in shape to play it now. However, I sing tenor in a choir. I find that I can hit the notes much better if I imagine the trombone slide positions when I sing. This a great help when sight-reading a new piece.
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