Your Aging Brain Will Be in Better Shape If You've Taken Music Lessons

Studies are showing that learning to play an instrument can bring significant improvements in your brain.

Get a sneak peek at Academy Award-winning actor Geoffrey Rush and newcomer Johnny Flynn as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein, in National Geographic's global event series GENIUS, coming in April 2017.

Are music lessons the way to get smarter?

That's what a lot of parents (and experts) believe: Studying an instrument gives children an advantage in the development of their intellectual, perceptual, and cognitive skills. This may, however, turn out to be wishful thinking. Two new randomized trials have found no evidence for the belief. The IQs of preschoolers who attended several weeks of music classes as part of these studies did not differ significantly from the IQs of those who had not.

But that does not mean that the advantages of learning to play music are limited to expressing yourself, impressing friends, or just having fun. A growing number of studies show that music lessons in childhood can do something perhaps

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