A new study published in the journal PLOS Biology suggests that long-term musical training may help older adults maintain youthful brain patterns and better speech perception in noisy environments.

Scientists found that older musicians showed more efficient brain connectivity and better performance than non-musicians of the same age. This suggests that musical training builds cognitive reserve, preserving brain networks and reducing the need for age-related compensatory mechanisms.

According to the study’s authors, these findings support the “Hold-Back Upregulation” hypothesis, which posits that cognitive reserve from musical training promotes a more youthful functional connectivity pattern, leading to superior behavioral outcomes.

Beyond compensating for age-related declines, cognitive reserve may work by maintaining the integrity and functional architecture of neural networks, thereby mitigating the adverse effects of aging on cognitive performance. Here’s more: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003247

New research from Universities of Bristol and Manchester has found that trained detection dogs can identify Parkinson’s disease with remarkable accuracy by sniffing skin swabs.

In double-blind trials, the dogs achieved up to 80% sensitivity and 98% specificity, even when samples came from patients with other health conditions.

This non-invasive method could help uncover reliable biomarkers for earlier diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson’s, which currently lacks a definitive test. According to Claire Guest, the CEO of the organization Medical Detection Dogs, dogs have shown to be extremely accurate in detecting certain diseases, writing…

“There is currently no early test for Parkinson’s disease and symptoms may start up to 20 years before they become visible and persistent leading to a confirmed diagnosis. Timely diagnosis is key as subsequent treatment could slow down the progression of the disease and reduce the intensity of symptoms.”

Check it out: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1877718X251342485

Did you know that there is no meaningful limit to how much information the brain can store?

According to researchers, the brain does not store memories as isolated files in one specific nerve cell. Instead, a single memory is distributed across many neurons called an engram, which is a group of brain cells connected and scattered across brain regions. This is referred to as “distributed representation,” with each individual brain cell playing a role in many different memories.

Now because neurons can participate in numerous combinations, the brain can encode huge numbers of memories. Dr. Elizabeth Kensinger, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College, has suggested that related memories share overlapping patterns, helping us to generalize and make predictions — something many neuroscientists believe is the reason for memory. And if a few neurons are damaged, the memory may still be recoverable because it's not stored in just one place. Absolutely fascinating! Check it out: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaw4325