OTTAWA, July 29 -- The benefits of music for the brain are well established. But how well can the musical mind withstand old age, given that aging is inevitably accompanied by a more or less significant decline in cognitive performance? A study published in the journal PLOS One set out to investigate.

Aging brings a number of physical and cognitive changes, even in individuals with no specific pathologies. Older people often worry about forgetting where their keys are, or the title of a movie they've recently seen on TV. But researchers in Canada claim that these memory lapses are less likely to occur when it comes to music. The scientists have discovered that older people are just as likely as younger people to remember melodies they ha...