Research Updates
Here at Bigger Better Brains we believe that through educating yourself, you can then educate and affect positive change in your community.
With all of the research in the field of neuromusical science, our BBB Research section serves as a content hub for you. We regularly share findings and break down the latest research to educate and inspire discussion. We hope you enjoy this page on our website and share BBB news with your colleagues, parents and students.
Is music talent set or grown?
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.
Effective working memory leads to effective and efficient learning
Working memory is our temporary storage unit for information. It is the folder we put our daily timetable in, what we need to take with us to work or school.
I succeeded as an entrepreneur because of my music degree
“I succeeded as an entrepreneur not despite the fact that I had a music degree, but precisely because of it.” This statement came from Panos Panay, the founding managing director of the Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship at Berklee College of Music.
Do teenagers know best when it comes to using music to enhance study?
Here is a question we get from parents all the time – should I let my teenager listen to music while they study?
Strings for the win!
This study followed the students for two years and measured how the different types of music learning impacted on several executive function skills.
Musical training linked to improved attention and working memory
“Musical training can improve attention and working memory, which are executive functions that are important for daily life and are correlated with general better outcomes during lifespan.”
A school transformed itself by giving every student a violin
This is where the power of the story is. It is not simply that music learning has transformed a school and its students; it is HOW it has done it.
Could music help improve students’ ability to learn?
As students worldwide are having educational experiences that are a little or a lot different to their “normal”, teachers are looking for ways to maintain students’ engagement in a similar way to when they are attending “normal” school.
Music hits the mark to improve our memory
For almost a decade now we have understood that music listening activates the reward network in the brain.
Music learning enhances executive function in preschoolers
After 12 weeks of 35 minutes of active music learning every day, randomly chosen preschoolers in the experiment group had higher scores on all of these executive function measures.
Make your brain more efficient
How efficiently is your brain working today? Music learning trains the brain to use fewer brain resources when compared with non-musically trained people (and in this case those who are also bilingual).
Background music ‘significantly impairs’ creativity
Do you use background music when you are completing a creative task? If you do, do you find that your creative output is better, more innovative or unexpected, or does the background music hinders these outputs?
