Music seems to provoke emotions in listeners no matter their age. A Canadian-American study, recently published in the journal Network Neuroscience, has investigated this phenomenon, with researchers using music to study the brain function of older and younger individuals.
They monitored the brain activity of two cohorts of participants while they listened to music: one composed of young adults with an average age of 19, the other of seniors with an average age of 67. The academics played 24 recordings, including excerpts from well-known and easily recognisable songs, as well as songs the participants had chosen themselves.
The experts also introduced them to melodies that had been specially designed for the purposes of the study, which, therefore, had never been heard before.
It turns out that young adults’ reward circuitry was activated when they listened to music they were familiar with or enjoyed. This is hardly surprising: music has been proven to be a powerful emotional trigger that can rouse emotions that lead to the production of neurotransmitters including dopamine, which activates the brain’s reward circuit.
Indeed, research published in 2011 in the journal Nature Neuroscience even claims that listening to music can increase dopamine levels in the brain by 6-9%.
In seniors, the brain’s reward system was found to be activated even when they listened to music that was previously unfamiliar to them, or that they said they didn’t like. The researchers thus conclude that “listening to music engages brain networks that may reorganise in multiple ways as we age”.
They hypothesise that older people show less differentiation between liking and familiarity. “If familiarity is lower among older adults but liking is consistent with younger adults, it is possible that older adults engage a different network response to music that is unknown but enjoyed,” they concluded.
This demonstrates the power of music to activate brain chemistry at any age. “Understanding how music works in the brain is highly complex, especially given that our brains are constantly evolving with age,” said lead author Sarah Faber. “But even when the music is not familiar to them, it still has the ability to make their body move, and to help calibrate or balance their emotions by activating those regions in the brain.”
The question now is whether music has the same effect on the brains of seniors with Alzheimer’s disease or senile dementia: Faber and colleagues intend to build on the findings of their study to find out.
Research in this field is still in its early days, but a better understanding of the processes involved could help improve support for people affected by cognitive decline.