Recent research shows that lifelong musical training may have a positive effect on the aging process. Speech sounds were delivered to 87 normal-hearing, English-speaking adults while they watched a captioned video. Those who had started musical training before age 9 and continued throughout their lives had significantly better brain responses to speech sounds than those who had 3 years or less of musical training. These results suggest that age-related delays in neural timing may not be inevitable, but can be avoided or offset by lifelong musical training.
PositiveTip: It may never be too late to improve your hearing through musical training!