Beginner's Fitness Programs

Archive for January, 2012

Although “Mozart Effect,” which made many mothers-to-be to buy Mozart CDs, turned out nothing real, growing numbers of researches do support music, especially playing the musical instruments improves your the brain functions. Many studies indicate children and adolescents who practice the musical instruments do better in school. The benefit of practicing the instruments does not stop there. A recent study published in American Psychological Association indicates that childhood music lessons could prevent or delay cognitive decline decades after they stopped practicing them.

Too bad that your mom did not give you the guitar you wanted, or your high school abolished music classes… Well, it may not be too late. According to Northwestern University researchers, music training is like that of physical training. You may not be a professional cyclist if you start riding a bike after 50 years old, but you still get a great cardiovascular benefit; so as playing music. In fact, if you are above 50s, there are more reasons to start practicing music. It is not only you can slow down cognitive declines, but also, if you keep practicing music, you will lower the chance of experiencing age-related changes in the hearing.

If you are still young, you should definitely pick up a music instrument. Other researches indicate that practicing music enhances your reading ability, verbal skills, and communication skills, and these skills are essential for work places, social life, and intimate relationship.

You may say that you don’t have time to start a new hobby. Then just listen to music. Research done at University of Amsterdam showed that if you are exposed to the variety of the music and listen them actively, you get significant benefits similar to that of trained musicians can get. Of course, the key is “active” listening. If you listen to music on an MP3 player as a background sound, you may not get an enough benefit, but if you do active listening, you get a tremendous benefit.

Of course, you need to be careful about listening to music through a headphone. According to Brigham and Woman’s Hospital study, one in five adolescents developed some hearing loss due to the music listening. Make sure that you don’t crank up the volume. Many people bring up the sound level to shut out the surrounding noises. If you are one of them, you may want to get a pair of noise-cancellation headphone, or an ear-plug type in-ear headphone. They cut the surrounding noises, and you can safely lower the sound level.

Which musical instrument should we learn? Well, it depends on you. If you had practiced any types of the musical instruments as a child, probably one of them is a good choice. If you have not touched any instruments before, a keyboard is the easiest instrument to start with. You can get a reasonable electric keyboard at a very affordable price. The recorder is good, too. It is cheap, and easy to start. If you think that it is a kid’s instrument, you are wrong. There are many great pieces of classical music written for the recorders, and some of them are quite challenging. You may want to avoid some types of the string instruments such as the violin. They are very challenging instruments, and you may give up even before you start enjoying the music. The guitar or the ukulele are OK, though still much harder than the keyboard instruments. Of course, there is Karaoke. Singing is also a very good music training. If you get good enough, you may want to apply to American Idol!

Sources
Musical Experience and the Aging Auditory System: Implications for Cognitive Abilities and Hearing Speech in Noise. PLoS ONE, 2011; 6
The relation between instrumental musical activity and cognitive aging.. Neuropsychology, 2011
The Impact of Music on Childhood and Adolescent Achievement. Social Science Quarterly, 2009; 90
Music training for the development of auditory skills. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, July 20, 2010
Northwestern University (2007, September 27). Music Training Linked To Enhanced Verbal Skills
Exposure influences expressive timing judgments in music. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Performance and Perception, DOI: 10.
Change in Prevalence of Hearing Loss in US Adolescents. JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2010

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