A team of psychologists from the University of Texas Arlington in the U.S. has discovered playing music professionally is beneficial to long-term memory.

They monitored the electrical activity of neurons in the brains of 14 musicians and 15 non-musicians using electroencephalography (EEG) technology.

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The research showed differences in the responses of the frontal and parietal lobe.

"Musically trained people are known to process linguistic materials a split second faster than those without training, and previous research also has shown musicians have advantages in working memory," said Heekyeong Park, an assistant professor of psychology.

"What we wanted to know is whether there are differences between pictorial and verbal tasks and whether any advantages extend to long-term memory." Park added.

"If proven, those advantages could represent an intervention option to explore for people with cognitive challenges."

In addition to EEG, researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technologies to study cognitive neuroscience in humans.

The participants were given pictorial and verbal items to choose from. They were later asked to judge if each item was already studied or not after they completed a whole study session.

Results show musicians outperforming non-musicians in EEG-measured neural responses. The increase of sensitivity was only found in their memory of pictures.

TagsMusic, Long-Term Memory, University of Texas Arlington, US, EEG, electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS, Musicians