Pitch pattern recognition is vital for both music comprehension and understanding the prosody of speech, which signals emotion and intent. But what happens when you can’t hear pitch patterns – do you enjoy music less and hear less emotion in speech?

Researchers have looked very closely at this phenomenon to understand if it is certain characteristics of music that elicit an emotional response, if it is a totally individual experience, or if it is a bit of both.

Have you ever noticed when you are driving with music playing, or your children are chatting in the back as you drive to a new place, you quickly turn the music down or ask the kids to be quiet?

Do you know someone who struggles to hear the emotions in speech? The skills of “hearing” prosody in speech are fundamentally musical. It is the melody and rhythm of speech, mixed in with the facial and physical expressions that went along with the speech, that our brains use to interpret emotions in speech.

Bilingualism and music learning have often been connected when it comes to auditory processing development. Do you know why? The reason for this connection is that music and language share an overlapping neural network.

The question “Does singing and listening to music during pregnancy help my baby’s brain?” and the answer are both complex and evolving.

When we have to do a task, many people often choose to put music on in the background rather than complete the task in silence. The researchers found that “background music increased the proportion of task-focus states by decreasing mind-wandering states but did not affect external distraction states.”

With hearing loss comes not only the lowering of our ability to hear the nuances in sound and some specific sounds altogether, but it can also lead to a withdrawal from conversations in crowded, noisy spaces and even create a feeling of isolation. What’s the answer? Join a choir! But why?