AUTHOR=Fauvel Baptiste , Groussard Mathilde , Mutlu Justine , Arenaza-Urquijo Eider M. , Eustache Francis , Desgranges Béatrice , Platel Hervé TITLE=Musical practice and cognitive aging: two cross-sectional studies point to phonemic fluency as a potential candidate for a use-dependent adaptation JOURNAL=Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience VOLUME=6 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2014.00227 DOI=10.3389/fnagi.2014.00227 ISSN=1663-4365 ABSTRACT=
Because of permanent use-dependent brain plasticity, all lifelong individuals' experiences are believed to influence the cognitive aging quality. In older individuals, both former and current musical practices have been associated with better verbal skills, visual memory, processing speed, and planning function. This work sought for an interaction between musical practice and cognitive aging by comparing musician and non-musician individuals for two lifetime periods (middle and late adulthood). Long-term memory, auditory-verbal short-term memory, processing speed, non-verbal reasoning, and verbal fluencies were assessed. In Study 1, measures of processing speed and auditory-verbal short-term memory were significantly better performed by musicians compared with controls, but both groups displayed the same age-related differences. For verbal fluencies, musicians scored higher than controls and displayed different age effects. In Study 2, we found that