Danish author Hans Christian Andersen once said, “Where words fail, music speaks.” And for anyone who loves music, you can understand the passion and joy that music provides in life, even when all else may seem in despair. As it turns out, the place in your brain where music is stored connects with parts of the brain responsible for such essential aspects of human life as creativity, emotions, and memory. So it makes sense that when you hear a piece of music, you may be overwhelmed with other associations having to do with when you originally heard the music or whom you were with at that time. In a recent post in Next Avenue, the writer Randi Mazella comments that “The right song can take us back in time and connect us to the past.” As it turns out, the connection between music and your mind can be significant in other ways, both as a therapeutic tool and as a way to strengthen your brain against potential cognitive decline.

First as a therapy. Previous agebuzz posts have touched on the topic of music appreciation surviving a dementia diagnosis. Now comes a new pilot study out of Northwestern University that demonstrates that playing music that resonates with the age or experience of a dementia patient can create an avenue of connection with caregivers and can be a therapeutic way to reduce such symptoms of anxiety, depression, and aggression. With this pilot program, a live ensemble played music for non-verbal dementia patients and their caregivers, which, as one of the researchers noted, “When language is no longer possible, music gives them a bridge to each other.” In this pilot, patients were able to sing and dance with their caregivers along with the live music. Not only were these patients allowed to reconnect to buried pleasures and memories but they were able to connect with loved ones in ways other than language. At the same time, the caregivers themselves experienced an emotional boost. Read more here about this pilot study of the therapeutic use of music for dementia patients, which will soon be expanded to a larger study to verify and enhance the benefits of this research.

For those who do not have dementia and hope to do all they can to keep their memory intact and their cognition robust, recent research shows that piano lessons can assist with this goal. According to this study, older adults who took 6 months of weekly hour-long piano lessons, with daily 30-minute practice sessions, were able to fortify areas of the brain related to memory, leading to the conclusion that piano training “may counteract naturally occurring age-related decline of underlying neural structures”. A second group in the study was exposed to learning about music without active playing, and they did not experience the same memory-boosting results. Another study of the brain benefits to be derived from taking piano lessons as an older adult found such lessons offered a cognitive boost, as much from the challenge to the brain of learning a new skill as from the therapeutic value of the music itself. Read more about this study here. And if taking up piano music appeals to your heart as much as your head, click here to read expert advice on taking piano lessons as an older adult.