2023-07-25 13:13:00
Music has many beneficial effects on the body.
It calms anxiety, stimulates concentration and memory, and provides a feeling of well-being..
We even talk about music therapy, which is a practice consisting of the effective use of music to improve/maintain mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health.
It would thus have excellent effects on people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia or Alzheimer’s.
In this case, it helps to revive the patient’s memories.
Music therapy allows coordination of the limbsgait, and improved movement precision and endurance in Parkinson’s disease
Music for a bigger brain?
As the body ages, it leads to brain atrophy and cognitive decline.
This justifies the importance of working on your memory, which is strongly mobilized for everyday activities.
A recent study has shown that music can increase the mass of gray matter in the elderly.
The piano and musical culture can increase the volume of gray matter
To do this, the researchers created a cohort of 132 people aged 62 to 78, in good physical and mental health.
These people were then divided into two groups: one was trained in piano and the other in musical culture (history, theory…).
“Participants received 12 months of interventions consisting of weekly one-hour music training. They were asked to practice at least 30 min at home 5 days a week (homework), and to record the duration of homework per day and per week.
The results showed that over 6 months, regardless of the group, participants had beneficial effects on their brains.
« Neuroimaging revealed increased gray matter in four brain regions involved in high-level cognitive functioning in all participants, including areas of the cerebellum involved in working memory. Their performance increased by 6% and this result is directly linked to the plasticity of the cerebellum,” explained Clara James, author of the study.
1690797108
#Music #increase #brain #size