Endless hours of piano practice can be the bane of a child's life - but there might be an added benefit of sticking with it. A study has found that learning a musical instrument as a child could keep you sharp into old age. Pensioners who had piano, flute, clarinet or other lessons as a youngster, did better on intelligence tests than others. And the longer they had played the instrument for, the better they did。
University of Kansas researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy said: ‘Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of ageing. ‘Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older.' While much research has been done into how children benefit music lessons, this is the first study to examine whether those effects can extend across a lifetime. A total of 70 healthy adults between 60 and 83 years old were split up into groups depending on their musical experience.The musicians did better than those with no musical background in various cognitive tests。