Did you know it’s become scientific fact that acquiring and developing new skills or re-discovering old ones helps our aging brains stay young? Yes, and further it’s been shown by scientific evidence that when we exercise our brains, for example by playing a musical instrument, not only do we maintain healthy brain cells (neurons), but we actually encourage our brains to create new ones! It’s something that brain scientists call neuroplasticity. A recent PBS feature called the Brain Fitness Program described and documented this wonderful phenomena in detail.

WHY MUSIC?

• Music is a Science. It is very exact. A conductor’s full score is a chart or graph which represents the frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once. If you have had any formal music training at all, and even if you don’t I encourage you to find a musical score online or perhaps at your local library to your favorite classical piece. Any work (or even a portion of it) by a major composer will do: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven. Put a recording of the piece in your CD player or on a “turntable” (remember those?) and try to follow the score and see what all the instruments are doing at a glance. With practice you will begin to comprehend more of what’s going on, you will also gain a greater comprehension of the genius required to compose a masterwork. Concentrate with purpose while you do this and you will feel your brain get stronger!

• Music is Mathematical.It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be performed instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

• Music is a language. Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French, and the notation is certainly not English – but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent abstract ideas.

• Music is History. Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation. For example, jazz. The only true genre that originated in the U.S. Early roots were from black slave songs that evolved into the blues that evolved into jazz.

• Music is Physical Education. Playing and/or performing music requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheek, and facial muscles in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

THE BENEFITS OF LEARNING AND PLAYING MUSIC

• Playing music enhances the sense of giving and receiving.
• Playing music helps develop abstract thinking.
• Playing music helps people be more social.
• Playing music aids the mind, develops the memory and fosters coordination of mind, ear and body.
• Evidence exists that seniors provided with music lessons exhibit long-term enhancement of specific cognitive functions.
• New findings suggest that music can stimulate complex cognitive, affective and sensorimotor processes in the brain, whose functions can be generalized and transferred to non-musical therapeutic purposes.
• The use of music in pain therapy has been widely reported.
• Performing music in public develops personal confidence and self-esteem.
• Research suggests that music instruction enhances the development of cognitive abilities, particularly spatial abilities, personality traits, motor skills and achievement in language and math.
• Plus, IT’S JUST PLAIN FUN!

Quotes from other internet blog sources:

“Play a musical instrument and/or sing daily. The therapeutic value of music is conclusive: Good music stimulates growth of the connective tissues of the human brain, especially dendrites and axons that otherwise wither with disuse.

“Learn something new: how to play a musical instrument, a foreign language, or start a new hobby”

“A study from Illinois is suggesting that study participants achieved a 50 to 70% improvement in their memory over a period of 18 months during which time they learned to play a new instrument.”

“Try challenging yourself with music, language lessons, or a new computer program; plan a trip with friends; or just hunker down with a good crossword puzzle this weekend – anything that makes you think in different ways is challenging for the brain and beneficial to your memory. And while you’re at it, do it all with a smile. Studies show that a positive emotional state is also good for your brain.”

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