musical minds

Obsessing about all things musical is normally very much an amateur and hobby kind of thing for me, but every once in a while I find an excuse to feed it into a feature (eg the one on how whales learn their tunes). This time I came across a special issue on music and development of the journal Developmental Science, which underlines the importance of music for studies of the mind. From the abundance of material provided in the issue, I picked out the papers on music and language and had a closer look at those. The resulting feature is out now:

Music on our minds

Music is widely believed to be beneficial for children’s development, but the systematic study of cross-domain effects, for instance between music and language learning, is still an emerging field with many questions left to investigate.

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 15, 7. August 2023, Pages R781-R783

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See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all CB features of 2023.

I'm not on Instagram myself, but I believe if you follow CurrentBiology there, you'll find my features highlighted there as well.

Exposure to music in early childhood is thought to be beneficial for other domains including language learning, but much more research into the details of its effects is still needed. (Photo: Getty Images.)

PS returning to the playful side of things, one of the editors of the special issue runs citizen science projects to study music perception and psychology through interactive games and quizzes. You can take part here.