Adult musicians tend to outperform nonmusicians in a variety of language and language-relevant tasks. Moreover, children who take music lessons will show an increased ability in several types of language skills. However, it is still unclear what the time course of these developmental effects might be, and the degree to which young children improve in their musical abilities. Here, we present the first year of data from an ongoing longitudinal study, aimed at finding if measurable improvements in musical and linguistic abilities can be seen among children taking music classes. We studied 90 children (age 3–6) who were enrolled to take group classes in a conservatory setting. We measured their musical, language, and perceptual abilities both at the beginning and the ending of the school year. Pre vs. post comparisons showed an increase in vocabulary size, pre-reading skills, and singing ability; these increases were beyond what could be attributed to normal development during the time. We also found that singing ability was correlated with language skills. Taken together, these results show that early childhood music training can lead to associated improvements in both musical skills and language skills, strengthening the evidence for a developmental link between these two abilities.

Certain spoken phrases, when removed from context and repeated, begin to sound as if they were sung. Prior work has uncovered several acoustic factors that determine whether a phrase sounds sung after repetition. However, the reason why repetition is necessary for song to be perceived in speech is unclear. One possibility is that by default pitch is not a salient attribute of speech in non-tonal languages, as spectral information is more vital for determining meaning. However, repetition may satiate lexical processing, increasing pitch salience. A second possibility is that it takes time to establish the precise pitch perception necessary for assigning each syllable a musical scale degree. Here we tested these hypotheses by asking participants to rate the musicality of spoken phrases and complex tones with matching pitch contours after each of eight repetitions. Although musicality ratings were overall higher for the tone stimuli, both the speech and complex tone stimuli increased in musicality to a similar degree with repetition. Thus, although the rapid spectral variation of speech may inhibit pitch salience, this inhibition does not decrease with repetition. Instead, repetition may be necessary for the perception of song in speech because the perception of exact pitch intervals takes time.

A long-standing debate in cognitive neurosciences concerns the effect of music on verbal learning and memory. Research in this field has largely provided conflicting results in both clinical as well as non-clinical populations. Although several studies have shown a positive effect of music on the encoding and retrieval of verbal stimuli, music has also been suggested to hinder mnemonic performance by dividing attention. In an attempt to explain this conflict, we review the most relevant literature on the effects of music on verbal learning and memory. Furthermore, we specify several mechanisms through which music may modulate these cognitive functions. We suggest that the extent to which music boosts these cognitive functions relies on experimental factors, such as the relative complexity of musical and verbal stimuli employed. These factors should be carefully considered in further studies, in order to reliably establish how and when music boosts verbal memory and learning. The answers to these questions are not only crucial for our knowledge of how music influences cognitive and brain functions, but may have important clinical implications. Considering the increasing number of approaches using music as a therapeutic tool, the importance of understanding exactly how music works can no longer be underestimated.

Research has used the normalized pairwise variability index (nPVI) to examine relationships between musical rhythm and durational contrast in composers’ native languages. Applying this methodology, linearly increasing nPVI in Austro-German, but not Italian music has recently been ascribed to waning Italian and increasing German influence on Austro-German music after the Baroque Era. The inapplicability of controlled experimental methods to historical data necessitates further replication with more sensitive methods and new repertoire. Using novel polynomial modelling procedures, we demonstrate an initial increase and a subsequent decrease in nPVI in music by 34 French composers. Moreover, previous findings for 21 Austro-German (linear increase) and 15 Italian composers (no change) are replicated. Our results provide promissory quantitative support for accounts from historical musicology of an Italian-dominated Baroque (1600-1750), a Classical Era (1750-1820) with Austro-German centres of gravity (e.g., Mannheim, Vienna), and a Romantic Era (1820-1900) with greater national independence. Future studies should aim to replicate these findings with larger corpora with greater historical representability.

human hearing depends on a combination of cognitive and sensory processes that function by means of an interactive circuitry of bottom-up and top-down neural pathways, extending from the cochlea to the cortex and back again. Given that similar neural pathways are recruited to process sounds related to both music and language, it is not surprising that the auditory expertise gained over years of consistent music practice fine-tunes the human auditory system in a comprehensive fashion, strengthening neurobiological and cognitive underpinnings of both music and speech processing. In this review we argue not only that common neural mechanisms for speech and music exist, but that experience in music leads to enhancements in sensory and cognitive contributors to speech processing. Of specific interest is the potential for music training to bolster neural mechanisms that undergird language-related skills, such as reading and hearing speech in background noise, which are critical to academic progress, emotional health, and vocational success.

THIS ARTICLE SUMMARIZES THE MAIN EVIDENCE TO date regarding links between the brain and music. Musical expertise, often linked to early and intensive learning, is associated with neuroanatomical distinctive features that have been demonstrated through modern neuroimaging techniques, especially magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These distinctive features are present in several brain regions, all more or less involved either in gestural motor skill (therefore probably related to the use of an instrument) or auditory perception. There also is growing evidence that learning music has more general effects on brain plasticity. One important notion, related to this topic, is that of a probable "sensitive period," around 7 years of age, beyond which music-induced structural changes and learning effects are less pronounced. These data are discussed in the perspective of using music training for remediation in children with specific language and reading disorders.