What is the connection between rhythm and reading?👏📖 They use overlapping neural mechanisms and this brand new study with beginner readers (aged 5-7) found a whole swag of connections, concluding that “rhythm skills and literacy call on overlapping neural mechanisms, supporting the idea that rhythm training may boost literacy in part by engaging sensory‐motor systems”. […]

10 minutes of music learning a week for 10 weeks can improve reading skills for poor readers. This amazing study is by the great Prof Susan Hallam and she tested a music intervention to assist poor readers. After a rhythmic intervention involving clapping, stamping, and chanting to music while following notation on a chart, the […]

Our traditional ideas about musical talent are being challenged by neuromusical research. Through studying musicians Neuroscientists and psychologists are working with a theory that we are born with predispositions for many things. Some people are born with a predisposition for learning and understanding music. This is often evident in their very high levels of auditory […]

Music learning in early childhood increases pre-reading skills and vocabulary 🧠🎶📖 The results of this study of 90 3-6 years olds found that early childhood music training can lead to associated improvements in both musical skills and language skills, thus strengthening the evidence for a developmental link between these two abilities. The study also found […]

Dementia prevention 🧠 take one course of “learning a musical instrument” 🎶 “If you don’t play a musical instrument, now [in our 40s and 50s] is the time to pick up the guitar or start playing the piano” says this researcher. While learning a musical instrument when we are young wires our brain well for […]

Can we introduce you to a researcher to watch – Dr Psyche Loui Dr Psyche Loui is a psychologist, neuroscientist and musician who investigates how music can be used to understand the brain. She is a violinist and works to connect our understanding of the brain with the experience of being a music learner and […]

Musicians have been found to have higher capacity for something called speech-in-noise. This is the ability to hear and understand speech in a noisy environment. This is interesting to researchers because this ability is one of the most commonly reported effects of hearing loss and the one that often leads sufferers withdrawing from social situations […]

Here is a very different kind of study for the BBB community to ponder. Periodically the research community completes a systematic review, sometimes known as a literature review, of a given area of research. These studies help  people who use research to inform their practice and policies to compare across studies within that given area. […]

We used to think that there was a centre for every major processing task, like language or maths. We know who that there are both centres for processing as well as a complex set of interlinking and overlapping networks that contribute to the processing of information. We find the cutting edge research and summarise it […]