The Universal Power of Music
Music can be a constant companion throughout our entire lives, from hearing lullabies sung by our parents as kids and later going to our first concert as a teenager to reminiscing on memories that arise when hearing a certain musical piece. As music can carry many emotional ties, we, in a way, create our personal soundtrack that accompanies us through our lives. But music doesn’t only serve an entertainment purpose in that sense: it goes far deeper and supports our brain development, emotional regulation, memory and can also strengthen our social connection.
In our project Active Aging and 4 ways to Kick Post-Retirement Depression, we use the power of music in combination with physical activity, creativity, awareness and community to enhance emotional well-being.
Physical activity, the core of aging actively, can become much more approachable and sustainable when it is combined with rhythm therapy, urban gardening and reflective practices such as journaling. We want to provide older adults with more life in this new chapter of life by nurturing the body, stimulating the brain and creating opportunities to build, maintain and strengthen social bonds. But as music is an important part of cultural experience throughout the entire life, let’s start at the beginning of it.
Music Supports our Entrance Into Life
Musical training has recently been seen to have a positive impact on brain development, as demonstrated by neuroscientific research[1]. In children, the influence of music on learning can be clearly attributed: children who underwent musical training have better verbal memory, second language pronunciation accuracy, reading ability and executive functioning. It may even predict academic performance and IQ in young adulthood. Generally, more significant plastic changes can be observed with musical training compared to passive auditory stimulation. The notion of a “window of opportunity”, a limited developmental period when effects of experiences on the brain are unusually strong because the basic structure of the neural circuits is laid out, places limits on neuroplasticity induced by musical training. This explains why certain abilities can only be developed in early childhood and should be used as crucial insight for the design of educational programmes. It was also observed that the degree of adaptation in the brain correlated with the intensity and duration of musical practice.
Additional neuroimaging studies have shown that musically induced emotions stimulate similar brain regions to non-musical basic emotions, suggesting a strong influence of “musical emotions” on performers and listeners[2]. This positive impact can be enhanced by making music in a group, as it enhances communication, cooperation and empathy with other participants. This synergy is also what we strive to teach in the Darbuka workshop, which is part of our project. Darbuka is a goblet drum featured in traditional music from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.[3]
Music as an educational resource might seem unintuitive at first, but can actually be highly beneficial. Children undergoing musical training consistently show better performances in closely related areas such as fine motor skills and rhythm perception as well as transfer effects which mostly apply to language learning, pronunciation and discrimination.
The Role of Music in the Epilogue of Life
Musical practice has been used as a first-line non-pharmaceutical intervention for people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) for a number of years now, with the focus mainly being on people already affected by cognitive limitations. Several studies show that general cognitive function, executive function (the brain’s ability to plan, focus, remember instructions and manage emotions), as well as episodic memory (the brain’s ability to remember specific events/experiences from your life) can be improved and therefore combat the negative effects of MCI’s[4]. This suggests a strong recommendation to implement more music in the lives of older people. A review[5] of 28 studies supports this statement, as well as highlighting the use as a preventative measure in healthy older adults.
Not only can music enhance brain function in older adults, but it also has a positive impact on social and emotional well-being. One randomized clinical crossover trial[6] focused on the impact of singing-based music therapy on feelings, emotions and social connection. The effects were great, especially in those already affected by cognitive impairments. Maya Angelou[7] once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”. Especially for people with dementia and related diseases, emotions carry much more weight and can help to make them feel much more alive. Only hearing certain musical pieces helps retrieve information from long-term memory that seemed long gone. Like Marta C. González, a former ballerina who lives with Alzheimer’s, remembered the choreography to Swan Lake once listening to the music again[8].
The positive effects described earlier are even more significant when people make music in groups, because working together to create something can reduce feelings of loneliness, especially common in people with dementia and similar conditions[9]. In care homes, particularly, they are at even greater risk for experiencing this, because these people often forget even recent interactions, making it harder for them to connect and build relationships with other people. This was proven by a study carried out in a nursing home in Turkey in 2021[10]. In musical therapy with a group, people don’t have to communicate and remember information, but can connect through the shared experience of making music together and share emotions evoked by the music. On top of that, social connection can improve cognitive function, which is highly beneficial in combating the negative effects of neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. And not only can people with neurodegenerative conditions benefit, but it can also be a great form of prevention for healthy older adults to support cognitive and psychological functions[11].
Lastly, learning an instrument can also be a new hobby, making the transition from work to life in retirement a lot smoother, since being occupied and having certain goals can be helpful with routine and healthy habit-building, which in turn potentially adds stability to people’s lives.
References
1. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2013.00279/full
2. https://www.oas.org/ext/es/seguridad/red-prevencion-crimen/recursos/biblioteca-digital/how-musical-training-affects-cognitive-development-rhythm-reward-and-other-modulating-variables
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblet_drum
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9408548/
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11352551/
6. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10560009/
7. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/maya-angelou
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvvXom7uqUI
9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8151914/
10. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364030683_The_Effect_of_Music_Therapy_on_The_Sense_of_Loneliness_of_Elderly_Living_in_Nursing_Home
11. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666956023000119?utm_source=chatgpt.com