The effects of musical practice on cognition are well established yet rarely compared with other kinds of artistic training or expertise. This study aims to compare the possible effect of musical and theater regular practice on cognition across the lifespan. Both of these artistic activities require many hours of individual or collective training in order to reach an advanced level. This process requires the interaction between higher-order cognitive functions and several sensory modalities (auditory, verbal, visual and motor), as well as regular learning of new pieces. This study included participants with musical or theater practice, and healthy controls matched for age (18–84 years old) and education. The objective was to determine whether specific practice in these activities had an effect on cognition across the lifespan, and a protective influence against undesirable cognitive outcomes associated with aging. All participants underwent a battery of cognitive tasks that evaluated processing speed, executive function, fluency, working memory, verbal and visual long-term memories, and non-verbal reasoning abilities. Results showed that music and theater artistic practices were strongly associated with cognitive enhancements. Participants with musical practice were better in executive functioning, working memory and non-verbal reasoning, whereas participants with regular acting practice had better long-term verbal memory and fluency performance. Thus, taken together, results suggest a differential effect of these artistic practices on cognition across the lifespan. Advanced age did not seem to reduce the benefit, so future studies should focus on the hypothetical protective effects of artistic practice against cognitive decline.

中文翻译：

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音乐家的记忆力和执行力是否比演员更好？常规音乐或戏剧练习对成人和老年人的影响

音乐实践对认知的影响是公认的，但很少与其他类型的艺术训练或专业知识相比。本研究旨在比较音乐和戏剧常规练习对整个生命周期认知的可能影响。这两项艺术活动都需要许多小时的个人或集体培训才能达到高级水平。这个过程需要高阶认知功能和几种感官方式（听觉、语言、视觉和运动）之间的相互作用，以及对新作品的定期学习。这项研究包括有音乐或戏剧实践的参与者，以及年龄（18-84 岁）和教育相匹配的健康对照。目的是确定这些活动中的特定实践是否对整个生命周期的认知产生影响，以及对与衰老相关的不良认知结果的保护性影响。所有参与者都接受了一系列认知任务，这些任务评估了处理速度、执行功能、流畅性、工作记忆、语言和视觉长期记忆以及非语言推理能力。结果表明，音乐和戏剧艺术实践与认知增强密切相关。有音乐练习的参与者在执行功能、工作记忆和非语言推理方面更好，而经常表演练习的参与者有更好的长期语言记忆和流畅表现。因此，综合起来，结果表明这些艺术实践对整个生命周期的认知产生了不同的影响。高龄似乎并没有减少好处，