A little music in your life is good for your hearing and brain

A new study suggests that people who took music lessons as children had better hearing later in life.

The same effect was found even in people who took lessons for one to five years, which may point to the power of learning an instrument on the brain.

The study looked at 45 healthy adults and tested their hearing ranges as well as their brain activity while listening to sounds, said Smithsonian.

They found that those who studied music, even briefly, still were better at recognizing sounds and hearing different frequencies.

The research suggests their brain can process sound much better than those who did not study music at all.

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"Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain, the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning,” said study author Nina Kraus, of the Northwestern University Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, according to the BBC.

"We infer that a few years of music lessons also confers advantages in how one perceives and attends to sounds in everyday communication situations, such as noisy restaurants.

She went on to say, according to  Scientific American: "The way you hear sound today is dictated by the experiences with sound you've had up until today."

Indeed, the study is surprising for how long term the effects of music lessons actually are on the brain and on hearing.

The research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.