Regardless of age, if one can start learning an instrument or even singing as soon as possible, it may slow down the aging of the brain. So we encourage middle-aged and elderly friends to learn an instrument or vocal music, and it's not too late to start at any time. Some studies have shown that elderly people who have never studied music also improve their language processing abilities after receiving short-term music training. Du Yi, a researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is one of the first organs to age in the human body. Brain aging is often accompanied by a variety of cognitive disorders, among which hearing loss has a more obvious impact on the quality of life of the elderly. Previous studies have found that the speech perception ability of elderly people in noisy environments generally decreases. In noisy environments, elderly people cannot hear others clearly, which not only affects their social and emotional well-being, but may even lead to early onset of dementia. A positive lifestyle is beneficial for delaying the occurrence of this situation. It has been considered that music training can effectively enhance the speech perception of the elderly in noisy environments, which indicates that music training has a potential role in combating aging. Recently, Du Yi, a research team from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, carried out a functional magnetic resonance study, which for the first time confirmed that elderly musicians can use two interdependent mechanisms of functional maintenance and functional compensation to delay the aging of their audio-visual speech perception in noisy environments, and proved that long-term music training can enhance the speech perception ability of elderly people. On April 26th, the related achievement paper was published in the form of a cover paper in the journal "Progress in Science". The process of speech perception in noisy environments is complex. "From the perspective of neuroscience, in the normal aging process, the structure and function of our brain undergo a series of changes as we age." Du Yi explained that from an overall structural perspective, brain aging mainly manifests as a decrease in brain volume. In different regions of the brain, the frontal and parietal lobes are often the first to begin atrophy, and the degree of atrophy is higher than that of the temporal and occipital lobes. In terms of function, elderly people experience a decrease in neural activity in the sensory and perceptual regions of the temporal and occipital lobes during cognitive processing, requiring the use of more frontal, parietal, and contralateral hemispheric brain regions for compensatory processing. The speech perception process in noisy environment not only involves the auditory system, but also involves the complex cognitive process of multi sensory channels and multi cognitive abilities. Du Yi stated that the general decline in speech perception ability of elderly people in noisy environments is the result of a combination of multiple factors. Firstly, it is due to a decrease in peripheral hearing levels in the elderly, and secondly, the degradation of brain structure and function leads to a significant decrease in the ability of the auditory center of the elderly to encode sound. In addition, some advanced cognitive abilities that support speech processing under noise will also decline significantly with aging, such as auditory working memory ability, selective attention ability, etc. In 2016, Du Yi's team published an article in Nature Communications stating that although the perception and processing abilities of elderly people decrease, they tend to use more additional brain regions, especially speech motor brain regions related to pronunciation, to proactively predict what others will say next. This proactive, top-down prediction can help elderly people better
Edit：qihang Responsible editor：xinglan
Source：
Special statement: if the pictures and texts reproduced or quoted on this site infringe your legitimate rights and interests, please contact this site, and this site will correct and delete them in time. For copyright issues and website cooperation, please contact through outlook new era email：lwxsd@liaowanghn.com
Recommended Reading Change it 
Home
