Learning to play an instrument could boost your short-term memory

Alex Wilkins is a writer.

A rhythm-based game can help non-musicians remember faces. Learning to play an instrument improves short-term memory.

A number of studies show that musicians have better short-term memory than non- musicians when it comes to music-related tasks. It is not clear if these benefits can be seen in the brain of non- musicians who are learning to play an instrument, or if they can be seen in the brain of non- musicians who are learning to play an instrument.

The University of California, San Francisco, and their colleagues randomly assigned a group of 47 non-musicians, aged between 60 and 79, to play either a tablet-based musical rhythm training game, which emulates learning to hit a drum in time with a teacher, or a more traditional

Participants took a short-term memory test at the beginning and end of the eight weeks. The group who played the rhythm training game had an improvement on their initial score.

There was an increase in activity in the right superior parietal lobe after the training. It suggests that the rhythm training is improving the brain's ability to focus on a task to get it ready for converting what you are doing into memory

It seems like an attentional control aspect of memory, where you orient your attention in such a way that it will allow you to retrieve it from memory.

Josh Davis says that the ability to remember and recognise faces tends to decline as we get older.

The study needs to be shown in real-world facial recognition scenarios as well as in lab-based tests to be convincing.

Extending the training period may lead to better memory recall.

The journal is titled PNAS and it can be found at 10.1073/pnas.

You can get the health, diet and fitness news you need every Saturday by signing up for our Health Check newsletter.