Creativity: great for the aging brain

Check out this video that demonstrates how staying creative, and exercising both sides of your brain, can prolong your life -- and make it more fun, too. Oh, to be eighty!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtNI3Rrqb_0

Sight reading a new piece of music is an important and complex skill for musicians. When sight reading, musicians aren’t reading the notes their fingers are currently playing, they are looking ahead to read the notes that are coming next. And they are predicting what may be coming next. Working memory is the ability to keep relevant pieces of information active in your mind. Pianists use working memory when they read music.

Importantly, music like language has a grammar which consists of rules that specify which notes are likely to follow other notes in a piece of music.

Conversationalists and working memory

Conversationalists are doing the same thing. When we converse our interaction is ruled-based, and we tend to follow the other person meaningfully. We use this well practiced capacity which we have gained over decades to predict the direction and thread of the conversation. Like musicians we use our working memory in conversation to keep relevant pieces of information active in our mind when we converse with our friends or neighbours.

All of this is good news for the brain, which seems to benefit from regular exercise. And it isn't too early to try something new.