Research reveals how aging brains adapt to remember music

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Music can reveal which areas of the brain are affected by ageing, according to a new study.

Researchers are using 300-year-old compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, along with state-of-the-art scanning technology, to investigate how the brain compensates for age-related changes.

The findings show that senior citizens are just as capable as younger people of remembering musical pieces — but certain parts of their brains must work harder.

The research team hope the study will help to indicate the chances of developing dementia in older people.

The study, published in the journal Communications Biology, is unusual because it combines classical music and neurophysiology to map the changes that occur in the brain with age.

A total of 76 participants - 37 young adults, aged 18 to 25, and 39 people over the age of 60 - underwent brain scans while listening to a piano piece by German composer and organist, which they had heard twice beforehand.

The study, by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark along with researchers from the University of Oxford, shows that when older people listen to familiar music, sensory-related areas of the brain become extra active, while the regions responsible for memory function are less active.

Study leader Professor Leonardo Bonetti, from the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University, said: "This suggests that the sensory areas of older brains work harder to compensate for the reduced response from the areas typically involved in memory processes.

"The study emphasizes that changes in brain functionality do not necessarily lead to disease or dysfunction.

"Ageing is not just about having a declining brain, but about having a brain that adapts to challenges and compensates for mechanisms that become less effective."

He said that during the scanning, participants were also presented with altered versions of the original melodies.

The scans showed that when older people listen to variations of music they haven't heard before, the core parts of the brain involved in memory processes react less than they do in younger people.

However, the activity in sensory-related regions remains unchanged, according to the findings published in the journal Communications Biology.

Bonetti said: "The older group simply does not show the same brain responses when hearing new variations of the music as the younger group.

"This may help explain the mechanism that makes it challenging for older people to cope with changes in general,"

He hopes the study will improve the understanding of how memory functions and that, in the long term, it could influence how we screen older individuals at risk of developing dementia.

Bonetti said: "We are now planning to expand the study to include people with mild dementia.

"The hope is that we can identify biomarkers and use the data to predict how changes in brain functionality indicate the likelihood of developing dementia."

Bonetti explained that music sequences inspired by Bach's compositions were used in the study as his music is "very easy" to remember.

He says Bach's music combines strong harmonies and a clear hierarchical structure, which is repeated many times, especially in the Prelude in C Minor from Das Wohltemperirte Clavier, for which the researchers created a simplified and controlled version.

Bonetti added: "The participants heard the piece twice and then remembered it.

"In memory research, music is often better than, for example, numbers or text, because it is intuitively memorable.

"This allows us more easily to discover how the brain processes information over time.

"Therefore, music is an excellent tool for understanding how the brain changes its function to support memory as we age."