Choir Singing May Improve Cognitive Function in Older Adults

According to research newly published in PLOS ONE and reported on by Healio , choir singing improves verbal flexibility — a domain of executive function and cognition — in older men and women. Emmi Pentikäinen, a doctoral student in the Cognitive Brain Research Unit at the University of Helsinki, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire study that included a main cohort group of 162 participants and a sub-cohort study that included a randomly selected sample of 74 participants who underwent neuropsychological tests. Those included in the research were 60 and older and did not have neurological or psychiatric disorders. Among all participants, a total of 106 were people who'd been singing in a choir for at least one year, while 56 were controls who had not sung in a choir during the past decade. All participants completed a half-dozen questionnaires to measure such things as their cognitive function and social well-being. Those randomly selected for neuropsychological testing underwent 1.5 hours of testing from a trained psychologist to evaluate their general cognition and working and episodic memory, among other things. The study found that choir singers had substantially higher verbal flexibility than controls. Also, when comparing low- and high-activity groups with controls, Pentikäinen's team learned that social integration scores were higher in high-activity choir singers vs. low-activity singers and controls.