Music learning is the most effective way, both in terms of time and impact, to prime the brain for language learning.

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.

A great article from Dr Nina Kraus, one of the leading researchers in the neural encoding of speech and music.

This study has compared musical training with the visual aspect of reading languages. The most interesting thing about the study design is that they have compared Chinese language reading and English language reading.

This study is important because it is trying to get to the bottom of the neural development of the auditory and motor networks. It is, however, building on the research from musically trained children and reading.

10 minutes of music learning a week for 10 weeks can improve reading skills for poor readers.

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”.

Here is a fascinating new theoretical paper about the relationship between rhythm and language abilities. A theoretical study is one that brings together all the relevant current research and puts forward a theory of, in this case, how two concepts may be connected.

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.