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"Investigators wanted to determine if lifelong musicianship protects against normal hearing decline in later years, specifically for central auditory processing associated with understanding speech. Hearing problems are prevalent in the elderly, who often report having difficulty understanding speech in the presence of background noise. Scientists describe this as the 'cocktail party problem.' Part of this difficulty is due to an age-related decrease in the ability to detect and discriminate acoustic information from the environment.
"'What we found was that being a musician may contribute to better hearing in old age by delaying some of the age-related changes in central auditory processing. This advantage widened considerably for musicians as they got older when compared to similar-aged non-musicians,' said lead investigator Benjamin Rich Zendel at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute."