I acquired another "datapoint" on this fascinating and important subject. I recently attended a college-level lecture on "Neuro-protection" and strategies for maintaining brain health as we age. The professor specializes in Parkinson's Disease, is associated with the Michael J. Fox Foundation and works with animal models; mainly rats. [He says rats are much more cooperative than mice, expecially when you put them on the treadmill. Plus they bite less frequently.] He is also knowledgable in Alzheimer's.

We all should know this by now, but in his slides he talked a lot about daily physical and mental exercise; the idea is that we need to "struggle" if benefits are to be expected. Music did come up, and his point was learning a new instrument is better than playing the one you already know how to play; again, it's all about building new neural pathways to replace the ones that are going to die off, and that takes "struggle".

New terms entered my vocabulary as a result of his talk: Neurotrophic and BDNF.

Bottom line: There are things we can do.

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For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.