$20 million is a serious investment in music as medicine
It has been widely publicised that the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the U.S. has just awarded the Sound Health Initiative $20 million over the next 5 years to look into the health and learning benefits of music and music learning.
Firstly, this is an enormous leap forward. Secondly, this is serious money to be putting behind any research field. Think about it. If you had $20 million to give to any project, what would you require, from that project, to feel confident of their success and that what you were investing in had a solid basis? The answers are: a group of proven and effective researchers and a significant body of research to base the projects on.
Here is another thing to think about. $20 million may seem like a great deal of money, but when it comes to splitting it across 6 projects and across 5 years, and an hour in an fMRI costs US$500, the projects need to be very cost efficient.
