Sound familiar?
Happy Halloween,
Natalia
http://www.psmag.com/blogs/news-blog/want-quick-accurate-thinking-ask-musician-66844/
Want Quick, Accurate Thinking? Ask a Musician
New research finds musical training appears to sharpen our ability to
detect our own mistakes, and rapidly make needed adjustments.
September 24, 2013 . By Tom Jacobs
<http://www.psmag.com/author/tomjacobs/> .
****
We all want to stay sharp-witted as we age, which explains the recent
proliferation of brain games and puzzles. But newly published research
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393213003217>
suggests a low-tech way of retaining our mental agility: Learn to play a
musical instrument.
According to this research, people who spend many hours in the practice
room not only process information unusually efficiently, but they also
do a superior job of not letting occasional errors derail them.
These findings "suggest that playing a musical instrument might improve
the ability to monitor our behavior and adjust our responses effectively
when needed," writes a research team led by cognitive neuroscientist
Ines Jentzsch
<https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/ines-jentzsch%284bbe95ac-1984-40d5-be11-7f91fc69feef%29.html>
of the University of St. Andrews. "As these processes are amongst the
first to be affected by cognitive aging, our evidence could promote
musical activity as a realistic intervention to slow or even prevent
(one type of) age-related decline."
Music study could be "a realistic intervention method to slow or
even prevent age-related decline in frontal brain functioning."
In the journal /Neuropsychologica,/ the researchers describe an
experiment featuring 36 young adults. They were divided into four
groups: Musicians who had accumulated at least 5,000 hours of practice;
those who had clocked 2,000 to 5,000 hours; the lightweights (or
newcomers to music) who had practiced for 200 to 2,000 hours; and
non-musicians.
After answering a series of questions, all the participants took part in
two standard cognitive tests: a Stroop task
<http://www.snre.umich.edu/eplab/demos/st0/stroopdesc.html>, in which
they were asked to respond to words written in the color blue (even if
the letters spelled out "red"); and a Simon task,
<http://idiom.ucsd.edu/%7Egoodall/119simontask.pdf> in which they were
instructed to respond with their right hand if they saw a red shape, and
with their left hand if they saw a blue shape---even if the shapes
popped up on the opposite side of the screen.
As they performed these tricky tasks, their brains were continuously
monitored via EEG recording.
The results: People with more musical training responded faster than
those with little or no training, with no loss in accuracy. "This result
suggests that higher levels of musical training might result in more
efficient information processing in general," the researchers write.
In addition, "higher levels of musical practice were also associated
with a better engagement of cognitive control processes, as indicated by
more efficient error and conflict detection," the researchers report.
Participants who had spent more quality time with their instruments had
"a better ability to detect errors and conflicts, and a reduced
reactiveness to these detected problems."
"Together," the researchers conclude, "the present findings suggest that
playing a musical instrument might improve the ability to monitor our
behavior, and adjust our responses effectively when needed."
Jentzsch and her colleagues note that this shouldn't be too surprising,
in that a musician learns to be constantly cognizant of his or her
performance, "but not to be overly affected by mistakes."
In other words, if you hit a wrong note, it's important to be
immediately aware of what you did wrong, but it's just as important to
not hesitate or second-guess yourself. You quickly take stock what
happened and move on---a skill the musicians in the study applied to
these two tests, and one players can presumably apply to an assortment
of everyday challenges.
The researchers caution that they haven't established "a causal link
between musical activity and the effectiveness of frontal brain
functions." They concede it's possible that people who generally perform
well on cognitive tasks might be more likely to take up an instrument.
That said, they note that participants in their study "were drawn from
our university population (students or employees) with a comparable
educational background."
They also point out that their participants were amateur musicians. Even
those who logged the most practice time did not approach the hours put
in by a longtime professional.
The fact that practicing was associated with improved cognitive
functioning even for these non-professionals suggests music study could
be "a realistic intervention method to slow or even prevent age-related
decline in frontal brain functioning," they write.
So if you want to be sharp, start practicing those B sharps.
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