According to a study carried out a few years ago by the British psychologist Adrian North, from the University of Leicester, although we process musical sounds from the moment we are born, tastes are consolidated between 16 and 24 years of age. However, our tastes can become slightly more sophisticated as we age, "especially since the brain has listened to more music over time and can process more complicated melodies," says the psychologist.
Now, we can suddenly change our musical tastes when some kind of dementia assails us , as happened a few years ago to a 68-year-old Italian man. Doctors who had diagnosed him with frontotemporal dementia discovered that he had suddenly abandoned his classical music habits and was listening to a popular Italian pop singer, whose songs he had until then literally described as "shit noise." This change, explained the researcher Giovanni B. Frisoni, has not been observed in other types of dementia, such as Alzheimer's, and could have a neurophysiological basis. "For those over 60, pop music is a new phenomenon," said Frisoni. Previous studies had suggested that novelties are regulated by the right frontal lobe, and that a predominance of this over the left due to injury could lead to the discovery, among other things, of new musical styles.
