LONDON, April 30 — When it comes to amateur music enthusiasts playing an instrument, the piano is among the most popular. And this isn’t surprising, since playing the piano...
Playing the piano requires not only paying attention to sounds, but also moving your eyes over a score and your fingers over specific keys. — RapidEye/Getty Images/ETX Studio picLONDON, April 30 — When it comes to amateur music enthusiasts playing an instrument, the piano is among the most popular. And this isn’t surprising, since playing the piano offers multiple benefits, especially for elderly.
The researchers assessed the participants’ working memory and learning ability by asking them to perform several sequences of actions. In the course of the experiment, volunteers were asked to press piano keys in a precise sequence, displayed on a screen. They had to perform this task as quickly and accurately as possible, without stopping.The results surfaced two striking observations. Participants would improve rapidly, before plateauing.
In addition, Florian Worschech and his colleagues noticed that the volunteers’ visual behaviour changed with their level of mastery of the task they had to perform. Their eyes moved less and less as they trained, suggesting that they needed less visual information as they progressed. “In the course of the learning process, movement sequences are increasingly consolidated in procedural memory, and explicit information loses importance.
In general terms, this study shows just how much learning a motor skill like playing the piano demands of our brains. And this is true even when we’ve reached a certain level of mastery. Tasks made automatic by learning stimulate us cognitively, even if we tend to think otherwise. That’s why it’s so important to encourage piano playing in old age, to delay the onset of cognitive decline.
Elderly Cognitive Function Motor Skills Brain Health
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