Participants will carry out a series of physical, manual and/or intellectual activities (e.g., horticulture, physical activities, theatre, learning programs etc.) but not musical activities

Assessed using speech audiometry, which evaluates the participant's ability to recognize and understand spoken words in a controlled environment.

Description of the task:

Participants are presented with vocal material (e.g., phonemes, logotomes, words, sentences) in a silent booth and must repeat what they hear.

Unit of Measure:

Percentage of correctly recognized words, where higher percentages indicate better speech intelligibility.

Interpretation:

Higher percentages indicate better verbal recognition and understanding. This measure helps assess speech comprehension in quiet conditions.

Assessed using a Matrix Sentence Test, which evaluates speech comprehension under noisy conditions.

Description of the task:

Participants are presented with 5-word sentences along with a background noise (competition noise) and must repeat the sentences. The test adapts after each response by adjusting the difficulty (increasing or decreasing the noise level) until the participant reaches a 50% comprehension threshold.

Unit of Measure:

Signal Reception Threshold (SRT) in decibels (dB). The SRT represents the difference between the word volume and the noise volume at which the participant understands 50% of the words.

Interpretation:

Lower SRT values indicate better speech comprehension under noisy conditions.

Measure of the neural activity along the auditory pathway in response to a brief acoustic stimulus.

Description of the task:

Short-duration acoustic stimuli (100 μs clicks) are presented independently to each ear at 90 dBnHL, with filters set at 100 and 3000 Hz. The resulting waveforms represent the activity of the auditory nerve and brainstem.

Unit of Measure:

Latencies of waves I-V in milliseconds (ms). Longer latencies may indicate abnormalities in the auditory pathway.

Interpretation:

Normal latencies indicate typical auditory nerve and brainstem function. Abnormal latencies may suggest issues such as hearing loss or neural conduction delays.

Measures higher-level auditory processing and cognitive responses to auditory stimuli.

Description of the task:

Tones (50 ms) are presented at a rate of 1.1/s, with standard stimuli occurring 80% of the time and target stimuli randomly occurring 20% of the time. Participants are required to detect and respond to the target stimuli. The P300 response is recorded using electrodes in the same montage as for the ABR.

Unit of Measure:

P300 latency in milliseconds (ms) and P300 amplitude in microvolts (µV). Shorter latencies and higher amplitudes indicate better cognitive and auditory processing.

Interpretation:

Shorter P300 latencies and higher amplitudes suggest more efficient auditory and cognitive processing. Prolonged latencies or reduced amplitudes may indicate deficits in auditory or cognitive functions.

Assessed using the Selfy-MPI (Pilotto et al., 2019), a self-administered digital tool via the Portable-MPI app.

Description:

The Selfy-MPI evaluates frailty across several dimensions, including:

Functional status and independence: Measured by ADLs and IADLs.

Mobility: Assessed through self-reported ability to move independently.

Cognitive condition: Evaluated with a brief cognitive test.

Nutritional status: Measured using the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA).

Comorbidity: Assessed using the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale (CIRS).

Medication use: Evaluated via the ATC classification for polypharmacy.

Living situation: Assessed by questions on living arrangements.

Unit of Measure:

Composite score ranging from 0 to 1, where:

0-0.33: Low frailty risk 0.34-0.66: Moderate frailty risk 0.67-1.00: Severe frailty risk

Interpretation:

Higher scores indicate greater frailty.

Assessed using the Flourishing Scale (Diener et al., 2010), a self-report measure that evaluates various domains, including relationships, purpose in life, and self-esteem.

Description of the task:

Participants rate 8 statements related to different aspects of their well-being (e.g., "I lead a purposeful and meaningful life") on a scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree).

Unit of Measure:

The total score ranges from 8 to 56, with higher scores indicating greater psychological flourishing and well-being.

Interpretation:

Higher scores reflect better overall well-being, life satisfaction, and psychological functioning.

Assessed using the Cognitive Reserve Index Questionnaire (CRIq), developed by Nucci, Mapelli & Mondini (2012), a tool designed to estimate an individual's cognitive reserve based on their lifetime activities.

Description of the task:

The CRIq collects self-reported information across three domains:

Education (CRI-E): Years of formal education and training. Working activity (CRI-W): Type and duration of work experience, categorized by cognitive demand.

Leisure time activities (CRI-L): Participation in cognitively stimulating activities during leisure time (e.g., reading, social engagement, cultural activities).

Unit of Measure:

The questionnaire provides a total Cognitive Reserve Index (CRI) score, along with sub-scores for each domain (CRI-E, CRI-W, CRI-L). The total score is standardized, with higher values indicating greater cognitive reserve.

Interpretation:

Higher CRI scores suggest a higher level of cognitive reserve, which is associated with better cognitive functioning and r

Assessed using the Melody Discrimination Test (MDT), an adaptive task based on a three-alternative forced-choice (3-AFC) melodic discrimination paradigm, developed by Harrison et al. (2017). The test evaluates participants' ability to discriminate between similar melodies by identifying the melody with a single altered note.

Description of the task:

In each trial, participants hear three versions of the same melody. Two of the versions (lures) have the same interval structure, while the third version (the odd-one-out) contains a single altered note.

Participants are required to identify the odd-one-out melody by first identifying the most similar pair and then selecting the melody that is different.

The difficulty of the items is adaptively adjusted by manipulating the length of the melodies. In this study, the test consists of 18 items.

Unit of Measure:

Standardized z-score, with a mean of 0 and no fixed minimum or maximum value. Scores can be positive or negative, depending on the

Assessed using the Mistuning Perception Test (MPT) (Larrouy-Maestri et al., 2019), which evaluates the ability to detect mistuning in musical extracts.

Description of the task: In each trial, participants are presented with two versions of a musical excerpt-one "in tune" and one "out of tune"-and must identify the out-of-tune version. The stimulus material consists of short excerpts (6-12 s in length) from pop music performances (obtained from MedleyDB; Bittner et al., 2017) for which the vocal track was pitch-shifted relative to the instrumental tracks. Each musical extract has a vocalist singing the main melodic line and an instrumental accompaniment. Out-of-tune extracts are produced by adding a constant pitch shift to the vocal line

Unit of Measure:

Standardized z-score with a mean of 0, where scores can be positive or negative.

Interpretation:

Higher scores indicate better mistuning perception.

Assessed using the Emotion Discrimination Test (EDT) (MacGregor & Müllensiefen, 2019), an adaptive test that evaluates the ability to distinguish emotions conveyed by musical fragments.

In each trial, participants are presented with two versions of a melody and must identify which fragment corresponds to a specific target emotion (anger, happiness, sadness, or tenderness). Excerpts differ between trials in terms of musical features such as length, instrument, melody, target emotion and comparison emotion, and item difficulty is assessed with regard to the contribution of these features.

Unit of Measure:

Standardized z-score, with a mean of 0, where scores can be positive or negative.

Interpretation:

Higher scores indicate better ability to discriminate emotions in music.

Assessed using the Rhythm Ability Test (RAT) (MacGregor et al., 2022), an adaptive test that evaluates rhythmic perception. Participants hear a rhythm composed of high-pitched and low-pitched sounds and must select the image that correctly represents the rhythm, where sounds are visually indicated by squares of different colors in two rows.

Description of the task:

The rhythms are made up of high-pitched and low-pitched sounds. High-pitched and low-pitched sounds are represented in each picture with two rows of squares of two different colors placed at the top row (to indicate high-pitched sounds) and at the bottom row (to indicate low-pitched sounds). The tasks are presented according to a progressive increasing difficulty, and the stimuli are made up of 4, 8, and 16 sounds (quarter, eights, sixteenths notes).

Unit of Measure:

Standardized z-score, with a mean of 0, where scores can be positive or negative.

Interpretation:

Higher scores indicate better rhythmic ability.