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Sound Health (NIH-Kennedy Center)

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Sound Health: An NIH-Kennedy Center Initiative to Explore Music and the Mind
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2630954
Francis S. Collins, et al.

For stroke patients with Broca aphasia, for example, the neural connections that allow ordinary speech are damaged; patients know what they want to communicate but are unable to verbalize their thoughts. Standard medical treatments are limited, but patients working with a music therapist can learn to express themselves through song, which can translate into improved speech potentially through the utilization of neural pathways more heavily relied on during singing.

… effects music can have structurally and functionally on the developing, adult, and aged brain.

Processing music is one of the most cognitively demanding tasks our brains undertake, and creating and performing music is even more complex.

compelling evidence that in children, music training assists development of language skills, auditory processing, and educational achievement compared with untrained peers

In just the last 10 years, there have been more than 100 systematic reviews on the topic, including 10 Cochrane analyses.

improvisation yields widespread changes in activity across many neural networks compared with rote performance.

Steve Reich & speech melody

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Steve Reich at 80: The Phases Of A Lifetime In Music
October 9, 2016
http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2016/10/09/496552301/steve-reich-at-80-the-phases-of-a-lifetime-in-music

Reich has continued to find music in speech, hearing melody in the flow of words. “I mean, what tells you more about a person, a photograph of them, or a recording of their voice?” the composer says.

The melody of the human voice became one of Reich’s signatures. He quotes Czech composer Leos Janáček: “Speech melody is like a water lily whose roots go down into the bottom of the soul.”