This article is a great explanation of working memory and the different ways it is affected by disorders such as dyslexia, auditory processing disorder and ADHD.

As always it is all about context and what you trying the measure. This study found that background music for musicians leads to greater productivity, than non-musicians.

Music has been used as an intervention around the world to help students, and inevitably whole communities, who are living in challenging circumstances.

Musicians have been found to have a higher capacity for something called speech-in-noise. This is the ability to hear and understand speech in a noisy environment.

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.

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 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.

Here is a question we get from parents all the time – should I let my teenager listen to music while they study?

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 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.”

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.

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.