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Music activities may be an accessible strategy for maintaining cognitive health in our senior years.

We can benefit from listening to music, even if we can’t play a note on an instrument.

Learning to play a musical instrument is a brain stimulating activity—even when you start as an older adult.

Someone recently asked me what it was like to begin playing the cello as I turned 70 years old—without prior training. Taking a split-second to think about it, I replied, “It’s excruciatingly hard, but immensely satisfying.” Like most things, it’s complicated.

It turns out that learning to play a musical instrument is a brain-stimulating activity. It provides novelty, complexity, and problem-solving, a crucial triad of ingredients for maintaining brain fitness while also checking the boxes for fun, meaningfulness, satisfaction, and sometimes social interaction.

Playing music on an instrument, or even on your phone’s playlist, might also work like medicine, according to Barbara Minton, Ph.D., a psychologist, musician, and neuroscientist who focuses on the intersection of music, neuroscience, emotional healing, and wellness. She pointed me to a recent journal article studying the association between music-related leisure activities and dementia risk. The study, based on more than 10,000 adults over age 70, “… suggests music activities may be an accessible strategy for maintaining cognitive health in older adults, though causation cannot be established.” What’s more, the study indicated that “Always listening to music was associated with a 39% reduced dementia risk and better global........

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