Listening to your favorite singers may do more than lift your mood — it could also protect your brain. A new study from Australian researchers has found that older adults who regularly listened to music had a 39 per cent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who didn’t make music a part of their daily lives.

Dementia is a general term for a decline in mental ability that is severe enough to interfere with daily life, characterized by memory loss, difficulty with thinking, problemsolving, and other cognitive functions.

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 ageing.

“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’.