Those hours you spent dragging a rosined bow across squeaky strings were not just wasted hours of your childhood even if you did not go on to become lead violinist with the New York Philharmonic.

A study by Northwestern University researchers found that musical training when we are young, fine-tunes the brain’s auditory system and enhances sound encoding skills in both music and language.

It makes sense because all language involves pitch and inflection and in some languages, pitch is key to understanding, such as when one word may have alternate meanings depending on whether it is said with a falling or rising tone.

“Increasing music experience appears to benefit all children — whether musically exceptional or not — in a wide range of learning activities,” says Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and senior author of the study.

In the study, the differences in the tone of the Mandarin word “mi” was more easily noticed by those who had musical training than those who did not, even though none of them spoke any Mandarin. The word “mi” changes in meaning depending on pitch.

So the next time you think wistfully of all the vacant lot ballgames you missed while at piano lessons or perfecting your proficiency at the flute, keep in mind that your musical training prepared your brain to better experience more and varied learning activities.

Is forgetting what you have learned ever helpful? A study appearing in the January, 2007 issue of Psychological Science says that when it comes to learning a second language, at least in the beginning, the answer is yes.

While learning a new language, our native language words may distract us and inhibit our ability to express thoughts in a new tongue. In the study, University of Oregon psychologist Benjamin Levy and his colleague Dr. Michael Anderson asked native English speakers who had completed at least one year of Spanish to repeatedly name objects in Spanish. The more the students were asked to repeat the Spanish words, the more difficulty they had in producing the corresponding English words for the objects. The more a person immerses in a second language the more the brain inhibits native language - a phenomenon known as first-language attrition - making it possible to forget words one has used all one’s life.

Researchers found that the more fluent bilingual students were less prone to first-language attrition suggesting that the phenomenon assists the brain in the first stages of second language learning but becomes less necessary as the student achieves fluency.

Although the value of suppressing previously learned knowledge to learn new concepts may appear counterintuitive, Levy explains that “first-language attrition provides a striking example of how it can be adaptive to (at least temporarily) forget things one has learned.”

Association for Psychological Science

Guten Tag! Bonjour! Buenos Dias! Buon Giorno! Hello!

I don’t usually write posts in five languages but I am exercising my mental muscles for a good reason. Researchers have found evidence that bilingualism is protective against Alzheimer’s and other dementias in old age, delaying the onset of dementia by four years as opposed to those who are monolingual.

Links between various lifestyle factors and “cognitive reserve” in later life have long been studied. Cognitive reserve refers to enhanced neural plasticity, compensatory use of alternative brain regions as well as enriched brain vasculature. Scientists at the Rotman Research Institute and the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain have found that another lifestyle factor, bilingualism, is also protective in terms of cognitive reserve.

The researchers studied the diagnostic records of 184 patients who met the criteria for Alzheimer’s and other dementias. By interviewing patients and their families or caregivers, the researchers were able to determine that the mean age of onset of dementia in the monolingual group was 71.4 years. The mean age for the onset of dementia in the bilingual group was 75.5 years.

“There are no pharmacological interventions that are this dramatic,” says Dr. Freedman, who is Head of the Division of Neurology, and Director of the Memory Clinic at Baycrest, referring to the four-year delay in onset of symptoms for bilingual patients.

“The data show a huge protective effect,” adds co-investigator Dr. Craik, who cautioned that this is still a preliminary finding but nonetheless in line with a number of other recent findings about lifestyle effects on dementia.

The study is published in the February 2007 issue of Neuropsychologia (Vol.45, No.2) and was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.