“It’s about how we spend the money”. That was the catch cry of a number of politicians this week when the preliminary results from NAPLAN were released. Senator Birmingham was referring to the disappointing return on their investment in education. So Senator, what are we spending the money on?

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

Music and language: two sides of the human communication coin.

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.

This study explored if humans and monkeys process music, specifically pitch processing, the same way. Why would they want to research this? The reason is music, as we know it, is a unique creation by humans.

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”.

The capacity for language is distinctly human. It allows us to communicate, learn things, create culture, and think better. Because of its complexity, scientists have long struggled to understand the neurobiology of language.

While musicality and working memory are mostly treated as clear predictors of foreign language learning ability, the relationship between brain morphology and language aptitude is far from obvious.

To keep a beat, our brains have to get the auditory and motor cortices to first synchronise and then maintain that synchronisation as small things change in the music. To maintain a rhythm, our brains need to do all of that plus constantly monitor how the rhythm is fitting into the beat. It looks easy, however, it is very hard.

There is now an enormous amount of research that has explored, measured, quantified and illuminated the benefits of music education on cognitive, emotional, social and physical development. Such is the quantity and quality of the research that it is now understood that music education benefits the development of the whole person like no other human activity.