Musical Training Staves Off Mental Decline

Note well: people who have ten years or more of musical training are less likely to suffer from memory loss and other cognitive problems when they pass they age of 60. That’s the conclusion of researchers at Emory University’s School of Medicine, who compared phonemic fluency, verbal working memory, verbal immediate recall, visuospatial judgment, and motor dexterity of 70 musically trained people and 70 non-musicians between the ages of 59 and 80. An Emory University news release reports that the researchers found the benefit was greatest for people whose musical training started before the age of nine. Read an abstract of the study here.  Read an essay by Geezer about his musical mother’s loss of memory.