Musical Training: A Fountain of Youth

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In today's episode we discuss a research article investigating the impact of long-term musical training on age-related changes in brain activity, specifically during speech-in-noise perception. The study compares older musicians, older non-musicians, and young non-musicians using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain connectivity. It explores two hypotheses: whether musical training bolsters age-related neural compensation or holds back age-related neural upregulation. The findings suggest that musical training provides a cognitive reserve, leading to more youth-like functional connectivity patterns and better speech perception in older adults. The article includes detailed methods, results with statistical analyses and figures, and a discussion of the implications and limitations of their work.

References: Long-term musical training can protect against age-related upregulation of neural activity in speech-in-noise perception

This is Heliox: Where Evidence Meets Empathy

Independent, moderated, timely, deep, gentle, clinical, global, and community conversations about things that matter.  Breathe Easy, we go deep and lightly surface the big ideas.

Thanks for listening today!

Four recurring narratives underlie every episode: boundary dissolution, adaptive complexity, embodied knowledge, and quantum-like uncertainty. These aren’t just philosophical musings but frameworks for understanding our modern world. 

We hope you continue exploring our other podcasts, responding to the content, and checking out our related articles on the Heliox Podcast on Substack. 

Transcript

0:25

This is Heliox, where evidence meets empathy. Independent, moderated, timely, deep, gentle, clinical, global, and community conversations about things that matter. Breathe easy. We go deep and lightly surface the big ideas. Imagine for a moment you're trying to catch up with a friend in like a really bustling cafe. Yeah, all that noise. Exactly. The clatter of cups, everyone talking. It's just a blur sometimes. Or maybe you're at a loud concert trying to hear someone whisper something. Right. Happens all the time. Well, as we get older, this whole speech and noise thing, it often gets, well, significantly harder. It's a pretty common part of aging. It can be frustrating. It really can. But what if a lifelong passion, something like playing music, could actually help your brain keep those sharp listening skills? Maybe even defy some of those age-related changes. Interesting idea. So today we're diving into a really fascinating new study. It's by Zhang, Ross, Du, and Elaine, published in PLO's Biology just this year. Okay. And they explored how long-term musical training might act as a kind of cognitive reserve, you know, potentially protecting our brains from age-related changes, especially when it comes to hearing speech when there's loads of background noise. Cognitive reserve through music. I like it. Our mission here in this deep dive is really to unpack how musical training might influence the way our brains adapt or maybe how they don't have to adapt as much to aging. Right. We want to give you a bit of a shortcut to understanding this complex relationship between experience and how our brains work. And it gets interesting because there are competing ideas about how the brain handles aging, right? Two competing ideas. We're going to see which one musical training seems to line up with. And to figure this out, we'll be looking at brain activity, specifically something called functional connectivity. Functional connectivity. Yeah, think of it like mapping out the conversations happening between different parts of the brain. gives us a window into that internal network. Okay, let's unpack this a bit more. Normal aging, it often comes with some declines, right? In sensory stuff, cognitive functions. Yeah, it's a natural process for many people. But our brains are pretty amazing problem solvers. They really are. They try to compensate for these changes. And what's fascinating is how they often compensate. It usually involves increasing neural activity. Increasing it. Yeah, and strengthening the connections, the functional connections across pretty wide brain networks. It's like your brain is having to work harder, recruit more help just to maintain performance. Making an extra effort. And to keep things running smoothly, even as some parts slow down a bit. And this really shows up in that speech and noise perception we talked about, you know, trying to understand someone talking when there's background chatter or music. That's a classic example, yeah. A common struggle where the brain's extra effort becomes noticeable. So this brings up a big question. Can certain life experiences actually change how our brains respond to aging? Maybe lessen these challenges. Exactly. And that leads us straight to this idea of cognitive reserve. Building up resilience, you said. Kind of, yeah. Cognitive reserve is essentially this buildup of mental resources. It comes from positive lifestyle choices over time. Like what kind of things? Well, things like higher education, being bilingual. And as this study looks at, long-term musical training. It's like starting out with a stronger foundation. a deeper well of resources to draw on. Right. So when age-related changes hit, you have more to work with? Precisely. And musical training is, well, it's almost a perfect model for studying this. Why is that? Because it requires such intense sensory motor integration. Yeah. Think about it. Musicians are constantly linking what they hear, what they feel through their instrument, and the precise movements they make. Sound, touch, action, all connected. Constantly, coordinating these complex systems with incredible precision and this kind of intense lifelong training, it's known to boost cognitive and brain reserve, especially in auditory perception. Makes sense. It's a rich area for research then. Definitely. So, okay, if music builds this cognitive reserve, how does that actually interact with those age-related increases in brain activity we talked about earlier, the brain working harder? Good question. The researchers had two main hypotheses, two main ideas they were testing. Okay, lay them on us. So stepping back a bit, one idea is called the bolster compensation hypothesis. Bolst compensation, yeah. This suggests that cognitive reserve actually strengthens those typical age-related compensatory mechanisms. Like it adds fuel to the fire. So the brain works even harder than usual in older age. That's the idea. More neural activity, stronger connections than you'd see in an average older adult without that reserve, boosting the compensation effort. Okay, that's one possibility. What's the other one? The other is the hold back up regulation hypothesis. Hold back up regulation. Sounds different. It is. This one suggests that cognitive reserve provides these extra resources that actually help mitigate the age related decline in the first place. Meaning? Meaning the brain doesn't have to work as hard. It doesn't need to recruit as many extra resources. So it functions more efficiently. Exactly. It would show neural activity levels that look more like those of younger adults. Less upregulation, more youth-like efficiency. Less boosting compensation, more maintaining efficiency. Interesting contrast. So which one played out for the musicians? Did their brains bolster the effort or hold it back? Let's dive into how they actually investigated this. That's good. So to test these ideas, the researchers used fMRI, right? Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Yep. That's the tool that measures brain activity by looking at changes in blood flow. Very powerful And who did they study? They had three key groups 25 older musicians Let's call them O.M.s O.M.s, got it 25 older non-musicians O.N.M.s O.N.M.s And 24 young non-musicians The Y.N.M.s as And the non-musicians? Minimal experience, less than two years total. So really clear contrast between the groups. Okay. And what did they actually do in the scanner? Everyone listened to simple consonant vowel syllables, things like ba or da. But crucially, they heard these sounds in different levels of background noise, ranging from fairly clear, easy to hear, right down to really noisy conditions. And they just had to identify the syllable. A classic speech and noise tap. Exactly. And the researchers focused their analysis on a specific brain network, the auditory dorsal stream. Why that stream? Because it's super important for linking sound to action, integrating what you hear with motor responses. It's crucial for speech processing, and it's a system that musicians train heavily, connecting sound to playing their instrument. Makes perfect sense. And they looked at a few different measures of brain activity. Three main things, yeah. First, task-induced functional connectivity, or TIFFC. That's how brain regions talk to each other during listening tasks. Second, resting state functional connectivity, RSFC. That's the brain's baseline communication, you know, when it's not doing a specific task, just idling. RSFC, the baseline. Got it. And finally, just general bold activation levels in specific brain areas. Basically, how much a region lights up. All right, so let's get to the results. First off, the simple question. Did being a musician actually help the older adults hear better in noise during this task? It certainly seemed to. The older musicians performed significantly better than the older non-musicians, especially when the noise wasn't totally overwhelming. So at those moderate noise levels. Exactly. Their listening skills were sharper there. But it's important to add, even the older musicians still didn't perform as well as the young non-musicians. Lovely. Especially in the really loud, challenging noise conditions. So it helps, it mitigates some decline, but, you know, it doesn't turn back the clock completely. Right. Still, a clear advantage for the musicians. Now here's the really juicy part, the brain activity. The tif seal, the task connectivity. What did that show for the older non-musicians? Well, just as you might predict based on typical aging research, the older non-musicians showed increased tif in their auditory dorsal streams compared to the young group. So their brains were working harder, showing that upregulation. Precisely. That fits the general pattern of aging increased recruitment of resources to try and maintain performance. Okay, so that looks a bit like the bolster compensation idea, maybe. Brain working harder. You might think so initially, but then you look at the older musicians. Did their brains work even harder still? Bolstering to bolstering? Actually, no. Quite the opposite, which is really the core finding here. The older musicians' TIFF's pattern was much more similar to the young non-musicians. Really? Yeah. Their brains showed less of that age-related increase in activity. Their connectivity strength was more, well, youth-like, especially in key areas like the left supermarginal gyrus and the supplementary motor area. The difference in connectivity between the older musicians and the young group was significantly smaller than the difference between the older non-musicians and the young group. Wow. So it wasn't about boosting compensation by working harder. It was more like... Holding it back. Yeah. Keeping the brain operating at a more efficient, more youthful level. That directly supports the whole backup regulation hypothesis then. It really does. And here's the kicker. How did this relate to their actual performance? Yeah. For the older musicians, having lower tiff strength in the right dorsal stream actually predicted better performance on the listening task. Lower connectivity meant better hearing in noise? In the musicians, yes. It's strong evidence that this cognitive reserve for music helps maintain a more efficient youth-like brain connectivity pattern, and that leads directly to better listening skills. That's a massive finding. It really reframes how we think about cognitive reserve and aging. It's not just adding more effort. It's maintaining efficiency. Exactly. Maintaining integrity. Okay, so the strength of the connections was more youth-like in musicians. But you mentioned earlier something about patterns of connectivity, too. It's not just how loud the conversation is, but maybe the structure of it. That's a great analogy. And yes, that was another crucial part of the study. They didn't just look at the overall strength, but the fine-grained spatial pattern of that connectivity. How did they measure that? They used a measure called intersubject spatial correlation, or ISPC. ISPC. Yeah, it basically tells you how similar the detailed spatial fingerprint of functional connectivity is between different individuals during the task. Think of it like comparing the unique choreography of brain activity. Okay, comparing the brain's dance moves. And what did those fingerprints show for the musicians? The older musicians showed a significantly higher spatial alignment of their TIFFS patterns to the young non-musicians compared to how the older non-musicians aligned. So their brain's dance looked more like a younger person's dance. Precisely. Especially in an area called the left superior precentral gyrus, it means their brains weren't just showing more youth-like strength, but also more youth-like organization or topography during the task. And the older non-musicians, what did their fingerprints look like compared to the young group? Theirs showed a noticeable spatial shift in where the connectivity peaks were strongest. A shift. Yeah, specifically a shift upwards along the z-axis on the brain map. It suggests their brains were maybe reorganizing slightly, perhaps trying to find a new way to function effectively. But this shift was absent in the musicians. Exactly. Their neural maps stayed aligned with the younger brains, and again, connecting it back. For the older musicians, having a more youth-like spatial pattern, a higher alignment with the young group, was also associated with having that lower, more efficient, tipsy strength. So the pattern and the strength reinforce each other. It all points towards that hold back up regulation idea. The more their brain's organization looked young, the less extra effort it needed to exert. Incredible. So putting it all together, musical training seems to help preserve both the amount of connectivity and the precise spatial organization of how the brain connects during these tough listening tasks. That seems to be the story the data tells. Pretty remarkable preservation. Okay, what about the other measures? You mentioned resting state connectivity, RSFC. What did that show? Interestingly, both older groups, the musicians and the non-musicians, showed stronger RSFC in the auditory dorsal stream compared to the young non-musicians. So at rest, older brains seem to have stronger baseline connections in this network, regardless of musical training. That's what this suggests, yes. Increased intrinsic connectivity and aging. But did that stronger resting connection help with the task performance? Apparently not. There was no significant link, no correlation between the strength of RSFC and how well either older group performed on the speech and noise task. So a generally busier brain network at rest doesn't necessarily mean better performance when you actually need to use it for something specific like this. Seems that way. It really highlights that the task-specific changes, the TIPSI and its organization, are what truly mattered for performance in this context. Resting state is one thing, but how the brain adapts during the challenge is key. Right. And the last piece was just the general activation levels, the BOL-D signal. Yeah, and perhaps surprisingly, they found no significant differences in the overall BOLDI activation levels between any of the groups in the key brain regions. No difference at all. Nope, not in overall activation, which really underlines the main point. Yeah. It's not just about how much a single brain area lights up. It's about the network. It's about how those areas connect, how strongly, and how that activity is organized spatially. That seems to be where the crucial age-related differences and the effects of musical training really lie. It's the connectivity story. This deep dive really paints a compelling picture, doesn't it? How our life choices, like committing to music, can genuinely impact how our brain ages. It's not just, you know, wishful thinking. Absolutely. Stepping back to the big picture, these findings provide really strong support for that holdback upregulation hypothesis. Right. The cognitive reserve built up from long-term musical training seems to help older musicians maintain a functional connectivity pattern, both strength and spatial layout, that's much more like a younger adult. And that translates directly to better hearing in noisy situations. Correct. It leads to better behavioral performance. So it's not about the brain just compensating by kicking into overdrive. It's more subtle. Music helps maintain the underlying integrity and efficiency of these crucial neural networks. Precisely. It effectively reduces the need for the brain to engage in those excessive compensatory efforts typically seen in aging. Which really expands how we think about cognitive reserve theory, doesn't it? It's not just about building more capacity, but about preserving the quality and efficiency of what's already there. Well put. And this study really zeroed in on that auditory dorsal stream. Which makes sense, given the task. Exactly. It's vital for linking sound to motor responses, that sensorimotor integration we talked about. And that's a skill musicians hone constantly over years and years of practice. It's the perfect system to see these effects. Now, you mentioned it's good science, so there must be limitations, right? Of course, yeah. The researchers are upfront about them. It's a cross-sectional study, for one. Meaning they compared different groups at one point in time rather than following the same people over years. Exactly. So you can show associations, strong ones, but you can't definitively prove cause and effect. Maybe people with inherently more efficient brains are just more likely to stick with music, though the holdback finding argues against that simple explanation. Okay. They also pooled all the musicians together, didn't differentiate between, say, pianists and violinists or different types of training regimes. Future research could look into that. Definitely. And the sample size, while decent, was relatively modest. But honestly, these limitations aren't weaknesses so much as they are signposts for future research. They open up exciting new questions. Absolutely. It builds the foundation. Yeah. So wrapping up, the next time you hear a really seasoned musician playing, maybe effortlessly navigating a complex piece or even just, you know, humming along perfectly in tune. Yeah. Just consider this, that lifelong dedication to music might be doing more than creating beautiful sound. It could be acting like a silent shield for their brain. Keeping their listening skills remarkably youthful and efficient. And it makes you wonder, doesn't it? If long-term musical training has this holdback effect for hearing speech and noise, what else might? What other activities? Yeah, what other complex, consistent sensorimotor activities? Could intense dancing or intricate crafting, maybe certain sports that demand that high level of brain-body coordination, could they offer similar holdback benefits for other cognitive functions as we age? That's a fantastic question. Something for all of us to think about. For sure. So what stands out to you listening to this? Maybe it makes you think it's never too late to pick up that dusty guitar. Or perhaps it just validates a passion you've had your whole life. We hope you'll reflect on what this research might mean for your own cognitive journey. Thanks for listening today. Four recurring narratives underlie every episode. boundary dissolution, adaptive complexity, embodied knowledge, and quantum-like uncertainty. These aren't just philosophical musings, but frameworks for understanding our modern world. We hope you continue exploring our other podcasts, responding to the content, and checking out our related articles at heliocspodcast.substack.com.