Study: Music can positively affect the brain, especially good music

A team of music therapists, neurologists and psychiatrists at Northeastern University in Boston found that listening to favorite music affects the reward system, increases brain activity and improves motivation in the elderly of people. StudyLongitudinal changes in auditory and reward systems following receptive music-based intervention in older adults published in Scientific Reports.

Listening to music induces a special connection between the auditory and reward systems of the brain, with a positive effect on cognition, according to Saiki Louie, lead author of the study. Louis also notes how severe dementia patients behaved when she turned on tracks for them during visits to a nursing home - people moved to the beat of the music and sang along to their favorite performers.

Research Organizers held experiment: they arranged listening sessions with a group of people with dementia aged 54 to 89, including in the playlist tracks by The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen, classical music, and compositions by Hubert Ho of the Northeast university. After each session, the participants had to evaluate how familiar they were with this or that composition, whether they liked it.

The results of eight weeks of observations led scientists to an interesting discovery: listening to music increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which tends to suffer the most if progressed dementia. In addition, the compositions that the patients liked increased this activity with greater force, and the tracks that the participants in the experiment themselves chose showed the most significant results.

Louis notes that today scientists want to ensure that music therapy becomes part of the prevention of people over 50 years old. A similar program is already being considered by the US National Institutes of Health. And the American Retiree Association actively discussed the importance of music during a recent conference on brain health.