Musicians and people who are bilingual have long been shown to have a better working memory, and a new study makes a start on identifying why this might be so.
The brain imaging study, involving 41 young adults (aged 19-35), who were either monolingual non-musicians, monolingual musicians, or bilingual non-musicians, found that musicians and bilinguals needed fewer brain resources when remembering sounds.
Confirming what many of us have learned through practical experience, a study comparing different strategies of reading or listening has found that you are more likely to remember something if you read it out loud to yourself.
A study involving 100 older adults (aged 80-99) with hearing loss has found that those who used a hearing aid performed significantly better on a cognitive test (MMSE) than those who didn't use a hearing aid, despite having poorer hearing. Among non-users, participants with more hearing loss had lower MMSE scores than those with better hearing.
I’ve often talked about the benefits of musical training for cognition, but here’s a totally new benefit. A study involving 31 younger adults (19-32) with normal hearing has found that musicians (at least 10 years of music experience; music training before age 7; practicing more than 3 times weekly within previous 3 years) were significantly better at hearing and repeating sentences in increasingly noisy conditions, than the non-musicians. The number of years of music practice also correlated positively with better working memory and better tone discrimination ability. Hearing speech in noisy environments is of course difficult for everyone, but particularly for older adults, who are likely to have hearing and memory loss, and for poor readers.
Parbery-Clark, A., Skoe, E., Lam, C., & Kraus, N. (2009). Musician enhancement for speech-in-noise. Ear and Hearing, 30(6), 653-661. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19734788
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/nu-tum081709.php
New research helps explain why it’s difficult for those with impaired hearing to hear conversation involving several different people, particularly in a busy setting such as a restaurant or at a party. It appears that as you attend to a continuous auditory stream (such as one person speaking from one location), your attention gets refined and improved over time. However, if that person gets changing location, or if you have to focus on more than one speaker, then degradation occurs as attention gets switched and begins the process of building up performance again. It’s speculated that the same sort of attentional selectivity may occur with objects in a complex visual scene (think of “Where’s Wally”).
Best, V., Ozmeral, E. J., Kopco, N., & Shinn-Cunningham, B. G. (2008). Object continuity enhances selective auditory attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(35), 13174-13178. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/08/20/0803718105.abstract
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/bu-mta082108.php
Central auditory processing dysfunction refers to the situation where hearing in quiet settings is normal or near normal but is substantially impaired in the presence of competing noise or in other difficult listening situations. Such a problem is not helped by amplification and requires alternative rehabilitation strategies. Central auditory processing has been found to be impaired in those with dementia. Now a study comparing individuals with dementia, those with mild memory impairment but without a dementia diagnosis, and those without memory loss, has found that scores on central auditory processing tests were significantly lower in both the group with dementia and in the group with mild memory impairment, compared to controls.
Gates, G. A., Anderson, M. L., Feeney, P., McCurry, S. M., & Larson, E. B. (2008). Central auditory dysfunction in older persons with memory impairment or Alzheimer dementia. Archives of Otolaryngology--Head & Neck Surgery, 134(7), 771-777. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18645130
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/jaaj-mia071708.php
A study involving older adults with good hearing and a group with mild-to-moderate hearing loss has found that even when older adults could hear words well enough to repeat them, their ability to memorize and remember these words was poorer in comparison to other individuals of the same age with good hearing. The researchers suggest that the effect of expending extra effort comprehending words means there are fewer cognitive resources for higher level comprehension. Working memory capacity tends to diminish as we age.
Wingfield, A., Tun, P. A., & McCoy, S. L. (2005). Hearing Loss in Older Adulthood. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 144-148. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00356.x
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/bu-hli082905.php
A study involving 124 teenagers has found that those who were most accurate at tapping along with a metronome also showed the most consistent brain responses to a synthesized speech sound "da". The finding is consistent with previous research showing links between reading ability and beat-keeping ability, and between reading ability and the consistency of the brain's response to sound. The finding also provides more support for the benefits of music training for both language skills and auditory processing.
A new study has found that errors in perceptual decisions occurred only when there was confused sensory input, not because of any ‘noise’ or randomness in the cognitive processing. The finding, if replicated across broader contexts, will change some of our fundamental assumptions about how the brain works.
I’ve written before about the gathering evidence that sensory impairment, visual impairment and hearing loss in particular, is a risk factor for age-related cognitive decline and dementia. Now a large long-running study provides more support for the association between hearing loss and age-related cognitive decline.
Here’s an exciting little study, implying as it does that one particular aspect of information processing underlies much of the cognitive decline in older adults, and that this can be improved through training. No, it’s not our usual suspect, working memory, it’s something far less obvious: temporal processing.
Adding to the growing evidence for the long-term cognitive benefits of childhood music training, a new study has found that even a few years of music training in childhood has long-lasting benefits for auditory discrimination.
The study involved 45 adults (aged 18-31), of whom 15 had no music training, 15 had one to five years of training, and 15 had six to eleven years. Participants were presented with different complex sounds ranging in pitch while brainstem activity was monitored.
I’ve reported before on how London taxi drivers increase the size of their posterior hippocampus by acquiring and practicing ‘the Knowledge’ (but perhaps at the expense of other functions). A new study in similar vein has looked at the effects of piano tuning expertise on the brain.