Musicians Maintain Hearing Better
A hearing study of experienced musicians found they had a better chance than non-musicians of avoiding the hearing loss associated with aging. Christie Nicholson reports
SUBSCRIBE TO 60-Second Mind
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Some people may be protected from the hearing loss that often accompanies aging: yes, musicians. Scientists gave hearing tests to 74 musicians and 89 non-musicians. For the study, musicians had to be playing since at least age 16, and have a minimum of six years formal training.
Scientists tested: gap detection, the ability to hear brief breaks in continuous sound; mistuned harmonic detection, the ability to discern frequencies; speech in noise, the ability to hear conversation against a noisy background; and pure tone thresholds, this is the ability to hear tones as they get quieter.
Musicians had no advantage when it came to pure tone thresholds. But they performed significantly better in all other tests. The work is in the journal Psychology and Aging. [Link to come.]
The three tests in which musicians have an advantage all rely on higher-level processing in the brain, as opposed to analyzing input at the level of the ear. Which suggests that musical training makes the brain better at filtering sound.
—Christie Nicholson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism
Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.
When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.
Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber
