Scientist Learning How Music May Prevent Dementia

Jan. 23 -- As Christo Pantev prowled the halls of Toronto's Baycrest Center for Geriatric Care he was struck, over and over, by the vitality of many of the elderly patients who played a musical instrument.

"I saw much more activity in these people than in the others," says Pantev, a neuroscientist at the center's Rotman Research Institute.

He saw a difference even among those who were slipping over the edge into dementia. Memory begins to fade as the patients slide toward that dark abyss, but the last thing that goes — the last bit of memory — he says, is their ability to remember music.

And he thinks he may know why.

Musician and Scientist

He has developed evidence over the years that the study of music may change the way the human brain is wired. And that has kept him on a course that has guided nearly his entire professional career.

He has a few questions he would like to answer, including: Does learning a skill, like playing the violin, physically change the brain and improve cognitive and perceptive skills among children, and maybe even stave off mental illness among the elderly?

Maybe, he reasons, the intense concentration and the long hours of practice that make someone a skilled musician have benefits that far outweigh the rewards of playing a musical instrument.

Those are tall questions, but Pantev has spent the last few years laying the groundwork for research that is just getting underway at the institute. As a child, Pantev spent years studying the violin, and it became his passion.

Even today, he says, "If I work, I have to hear music."

In time, the violin gave way to neuroscience, but it was to return later as a key player in his research.

While working at the University of Muenster's Institute for Experimental Audiology in Germany, Panlev and a colleague began studying people who had lost a limb to see how their brains adapted to their new environment. It was known that persons who had lost a hand sometimes felt pain, or other sensations, in their fingers, even though the hand was no longer there.