Can Music Protect Your Brain? Study Says It Might Help Prevent Dementia

November 14, 2025
I. Edwards HealthDay Reporter

Listening to your favorite singers may do more than lift your mood — it could also protect your brain.

A new study from Australian researchers found that older adults who regularly listened to music had a 39% lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who didn’t make music a part of their daily lives.

The research, published recently as part of the ASPREE Longitudinal Study of Older Persons, followed more than 10,000 adults aged 70 and older for about a decade to explore different lifestyle factors linked to healthy aging.

“Music was one of the areas we were interested in,” senior researcher Joanne Ryan, head of the Biological Neuropsychiatry and Dementia unit at Monash University, told The Washington Post.

Ryan added that they "found that in that time period, they performed better, consistently better, on the tasks of memory and also on a global cognitive function test.”

Of the 10,893 participants, about 7,000 said they listened to music most days, and those frequent listeners had the greatest reduction in dementia risk. The study did not specify what type of music was most beneficial.

Ryan emphasized that the study can’t prove that listening to music directly prevents dementia, but the results were strong enough to suggest a possible link.

She noted music has been shown to boost mood and stimulate multiple areas of the brain.

Other researchers say listening to music activates motor areas, sensory areas and the regions that process emotion and imagination.

“One of the things that seems to be really important is just getting all those areas to talk to each other in meaningful ways,” Elizabeth Margulis, director of Princeton University’s Music Cognition Lab, told The Post.

What's more, the study also found that playing music provided a small but still significant benefit, reducing dementia risk by about 35%.

“Listening to music is neuroprotective,” neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, who was not involved in the study, told The Post. He added that it builds resiliency and helps protects the brain by wiring new neural pathways.

More information

Harvard Medicine Magazine has more on how music resonates in the brain.

SOURCE: The Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2025

Dementia Brain