Playing Music as a Protection Against Dementia

In a recent post we saw that music may help peo­ple with demen­tia learn new facts. This arti­cle explores anoth­er rela­tion­ship between music and demen­tia: play­ing a musi­cal instru­ment, even as an ama­teur, may pro­tect the brain lat­er on against demen­­tia-relat­ed dam­ages. Researchers had 70 peo­ple ages 60 to 83 per­form a vari­ety of tests…

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Do we need more music education?

We recent­ly pub­lished an arti­cle exam­in­ing the “Mozart effect” and the con­clu­sions were that there is very lit­tle evi­dence that lis­ten­ing to music does boost men­tal func­tions. How­ev­er learn­ing to play an instru­ment does seem to do the trick. In this recent Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can arti­cle, the edi­tors point out that:

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