Learning to play a musical instrument may help the elderly react faster and stay alert, claims a new study that may have implications for preventing some effects of ageing.
The study by researchers from Universite de Montreal in Canada shows that musicians have faster reaction times to sensory stimuli than non-musicians have.
The finding may have implications for preventing some effects of ageing, said lead researcher Simon Landry.
"The more we know about the impact of music on really basic sensory processes, the more we can apply musical training to individuals who might have slower reaction times," Landry said.
"As people get older, for example, we know their reaction times get slower. So if we know that playing a musical instrument increases reaction times, then maybe playing an instrument will be helpful for them," said Landry.
In the study, Landry and colleagues compared the reaction times of 16 musicians and 19 non-musicians.
They sat in a quiet, well-lit room with one hand on a computer mouse and the index finger of the other on a vibro-tactile device, a small box that vibrated intermittently.
They were told to click on the mouse when they heard a sound (a burst of white noise) from the speakers in front of them, or when the box vibrated, or when both happened.
Each of the three stimulations - audio, tactile and audio-tactile - was done 180 times. The subjects wore earplugs to mask any buzzing "audio clue" when the box vibrated.
"We found significantly faster reaction times with musicians for auditory, tactile and audio-tactile stimulations," Landry said.
"These results suggest for the first time that long-term musical training reduces simple non-musical auditory, tactile and multisensory reaction times," he said.
The musicians started playing between ages three and 10, and had at least seven years of training.
There were eight pianists, three violinists, two percussionists, one double bassist, one harpist and one viola player. All but one (a violinist) also mastered a second instrument, or more.
Roughly half of the non-musicians were undergraduates and half graduates.
"The idea is to better understand how playing a musical instrument affects the senses in a way that is not related to music," he said.
The study was published in the journal Brain and Cognition.
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