Kyoto University Study Shows Playing Music in Later Life Preserves Gray Matter

Long-Term Brain Scans Reveal the Impact of Playing Music in Later Life

As populations age across the globe, more and more people live long enough to experience cognitive decline and dementia, which are costly for health systems, families, and caregivers alike. Finding everyday activities to help the brain stay youthful for longer remains a priority for researchers studying healthy aging. Among vulnerable mental skills, working memory is among those most vulnerable to age related decline as people grow older. While previous neuroscience studies identified specific brain areas—such as the putamen and the cerebellum—that commonly shrink and become less active with age, those same regions respond remarkably well to musical instrument training.

To test whether these benefits extend to older adults who take up an instrument later in life, researchers at Kyoto University followed participants from an earlier 2020 project who had an average age of 73 at the start of their initial four-month training period. Following that initial phase, about half of the group continued practicing their instruments for more than three years, while the others stopped playing and pursued different hobbies instead. When researchers invited the participants back four years later for MRI scans and verbal working memory tests, distinct structural differences had emerged between the two groups.

How Musical Training Buffers Against Cognitive and Physical Aging

Participants who stopped practicing music showed declines in verbal working memory alongside a reduction in gray matter volume within the right putamen. By contrast, those who kept playing their instruments did not show the same drop in memory performance or the same degree of putamen shrinkage. Furthermore, brain scans revealed greater activity across broader areas of both cerebellums in the continuous practice group compared to those who stopped.

“For those who struggle to engage in physical activity due to body pain or other problems, playing musical instruments can be a great alternative. How fortunate that practicing music has such a positive impact on the brain and cognitive function!”

Kaoru Sekiyama, corresponding author

Broader Evidence Linking Creative Engagement to Younger Brain Age

The findings align with a wider body of research examining how creative pursuits influence biological aging in the brain. A study analyzed health data and neuroimaging from more than 1,400 participants across 13 countries, including tango dancers, musicians, visual artists, and action video game players. Scientists utilized computational algorithms known as brain clocks—trained on EEG and MEG recordings from more than 1,200 people aged 17 to 91—to estimate each participant’s brain age gap.

Across multiple creative domains, experts demonstrated brain-activity patterns that algorithms judged to be on average about 4 to 7 years younger than well-matched non-experts of the same age, sex, and education level. These protective effects appeared prominently within brain networks that are vulnerable to aging, especially fronto-parietal regions involved in attention, coordination, and complex decision-making.

Even short-term interventions yielded measurable shifts. Participants with little prior gaming experience who completed about 30 hours of training in a complex strategy game showed brain-age estimates that shifted by roughly three years in the younger direction, alongside improvements in attention tasks.

Social Connection and Creative Practice as Longevity Tools

In addition to cognitive stimulation, maintaining social ties plays a vital role in protecting mental acuity later in life. Data from long-running studies, such as the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study, emphasize that social isolation is linked to cognitive decline.

Combining creative outlets with social interaction—such as joining a community music class, a dance group, or a collaborative art workshop—offers a multifaceted approach to healthy brain aging. Whether through playing an instrument in one’s seventies or engaging in novel mental challenges, the adult brain remains highly plastic and can show measurable changes over a relatively short period of intensive training.