New research challenges traditional theories of infant language acquisition, suggesting that babies primarily learn language through rhythmic rather than phonetic information in their initial months.

This video contains excerpts from an ARTSpeaks event held on November 8, 2021. In this video, neurobiologist Nina Kraus explores the impact that music learning has on young students in the areas of reading skills, sound processing, language abilities, and more.

Prof Schellenberg compared 114 articles about music training and brain development and then analysed the titles and abstracts for the inference of causational (one action causes another) findings and correlational (a connection between two things) findings.

Periodically the research community completes a systematic review, sometimes known as a literature review, of a given area of research.

Studying how the brain processes music and how music changes the brain has fascinated neuroscientists for almost 30 years. But these two types of studies, how the brain processes music and how music changes the brain, are also very difficult.

To keep a beat, our brains have to get the auditory and motor cortices to first synchronise and then maintain that synchronisation as small things change in the music. To maintain a rhythm, our brains need to do all of that plus constantly monitor how the rhythm is fitting into the beat. It looks easy, however, it is very hard.

Quite rightly, people who have not had exposure to music education or the impacts on children ask the question “How can one activity do so many things? The answer is that music learning is a package.

Our auditory processing system is possibly our largest information-gathering sense. It keeps us safe and it processes mountains of information without our knowledge. It also never turns off. But, sometimes it gets tired and a bit overwhelmed.

I am sure there is a joke in there, but as you think about what it is, you should have a look at this new study. It looked into the differences between auditory processing skills, like auditory memory, and speech in noise.

Music is with us every day. Not just what we hear on the radio or our phone, but in the sound landscapes we are surrounded by that include speech.

For quite some time, researchers have been trying to understand the brain mechanisms that result in the condition known as dyslexia. It is a complex puzzle, the kind that researchers love!

Tinnitus is a fascinating and challenging condition to live with. The reason why it is so fascinating is that it seems to have no point of origin or malfunctioning area, it is a disease that stretches across the brain.