Scottish research conducted at Heriot-Watt University has found that playing an instrument can stave off aging. The study adds weight to campaigns by performers, such as violinist Nicola Benedetti, that musical education can have a lifelong effect on school children.
November 6th, 2019
The study found that “learning and playing a musical instrument may be associated with cognitive differences in older age.”
Sixty people aged 60 to 88 years old, half of whom played music, were recruited from around Edinburgh and the north of England, to take a range of tests.
There was a significant between-group difference: musicians performed better than non-musicians. Moreover, musicians’ spatial reasoning scores were almost 25% better. They were quicker at spotting an odd letter and did better in an attention test.
To read the full study, click here.
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This article is a re-post, with small modifications, of “Playing an instrument is key to staving off ageing, research from Scots university finds” an article published on sundaypost.com.
