Luke O’Neill on the benefits of listening to music
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The Pat Kenny Show. With Timber Living Log Cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts. Luke O'Neill, good morning and welcome. Good morning, Pat.
Music has charms.
It does. It's very good for you.
But there's science behind it, isn't there?
Amazingly, loads of studies have been done on music and the beneficial effects, mainly by neuroscientists and psychologists. A lot of studies have been published, you know, claiming that it's wonderful and it is wonderful, all kinds of skills.
What are the benefits of listening to music on the brain?
You're coordinating, Pat, sound, vision, motor control if you're playing an instrument, you know, focus, imagination. All these skills are in the musician. That's going to help the brain tremendously, isn't it?
Okay. And you're often told that if you learn an instrument even late in life, it'll prolong your brain health.
Well, a great study in people over 70, if they pick up a musical instrument and start learning to play or join a choir, you can see these benefits. And there was a 39% decreased risk of cognitive decline in people over 70 who begin learning an instrument. Big effect in that. Obviously, you're learning a new instrument. very challenging you know learn all how to play it and so on and your sense of music has to develop learning a new language as well that it can have an effect but there's more going on when you're trying to learn an instrument hand to eye coordination trying to read music at the same time all of that going on in your brain it's very complicated and if you're performing remember in front of others that's a nerve-wracking thing and there's something else going on your brain as you're getting anxious and then of course you're going into the flow state that's the beautiful thing about this
you achieve this kind of state if you play music, and that's very beneficial for the brain. And, of course, as you get older, your brain is going off the boil a bit, let's face it. It kind of wards that up.
Now, what about children learning music? Does that give a lifelong benefit? It does.
The under-7s, especially, again, a recent study, almost every week a study comes out, under-7s were studied, and if they learn a musical instrument, there's more connections developing between the two sides of their brain. They can measure that. It's called the corpus callosum. There's more connections, and that's seen as a good thing. And then very importantly, it helps them learn a second language. Isn't that strange?
That is strange.
Yeah. So in other words, whatever the music is doing, it makes their brains more agile.
How does learning an instrument affect cognitive health in older adults?
And now if they're learning a second language, they learned it more quickly. And that was good because you could measure that in them. You know, you have two sets of kids. Some are learning an instrument, some aren't. They're all learning French or something like that. The under sevens then were able to pick up the foreign language more quickly if they were also learning a musical instrument at the same time.
Now, the extraordinary thing that people who play music, the skill, even if they're in mental decline, may remain with them. And I'm thinking of Glen Campbell. I don't know whether you saw the documentary about him. He had dementia in his later years. And yet when the first chord was struck, off he went.
Yeah, whatever's happening there, it's like riding a bike in a way. It's kind of instinctive, isn't it? So if you learn music as a child...
facets of brain and memory are gone. And yet this remains.
So whatever the wiring is like when you learn an instrument or you learn a song, the wiring in your brain, when you play a song, you don't know you're doing it. It's almost subconscious. Whatever that wiring is could be the last thing to go, strangely, as the brain sadly declines. And you're right, people in their 90s can still sing every verse of a song they learned as a six-year-old. So whatever it is about laying down those memories, you can retrieve them more readily than other memories, I guess.
Now, the question of playing versus listening and playing which instrument versus another instrument.
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