Field: Neuroscience › Cognitive NeuroscienceType: Couldn't replicate a published resultArea: cognitive neuroscience of ageingTarget: Musicianship and brain-age gap (BrainAGE)Stage: replication
Hypothesis
Following an earlier BrainAGE study, musicians, and people with more musical training or active musical engagement, would have younger-looking brains than non-musicians.
What failed
In 125 scanned healthy adults, musician status was unrelated to BrainAGE score, and neither the musical-training nor the active-engagement subscale of the Gold-MSI predicted it; current physical activity did.
Broken assumption
Playing or engaging with music is enough on its own to make the brain look measurably younger.
Why
The abstract gives no explanation for the non-replication; the authors instead report that musical behaviours relate to a resilience factor.
From the published paper: Matziorinis et al. Brain Structure and Function, 2022. ↗CC BY