Music News

June 25, 2025

Top Headlines

May 30, 2025 — Singing to your infant can significantly boost the baby's mood, according to a recent study. Around the world and across cultures, singing to babies seems to come instinctively to caregivers. Now, new findings support that singing is an easy, safe, ...

Music Therapy Helps Brain-Injured Children

May 8, 2025 — Music could provide a breakthrough in assessing consciousness levels in children who have suffered significant brain injuries, according to new ...

Study Suggests We Don't Just Hear Music, but 'Become It'

May 6, 2025 — Psychologists suggest our brains and bodies don't just understand music, they physically resonate with it. These discoveries, based on findings in neuroscience, music, and psychology, support Neural Resonance Theory ...

Study Suggests Dance and Lullabies Aren't Universal Human Behaviors

Apr. 30, 2025 — Social singing and dance are often assumed to be hard-wired into the human condition; studies have supported the conclusion that these are common across cultures. But new research from an anthropologist challenges the idea that dance and lullabies ...

Favorite Music Sets the Brain's Opioids in Motion

Apr. 16, 2025 — A new imaging study showed that listening to favorite music affects the function of the brain's opioid ...

'Ugh, Not That Song!' Background Music Impacts Employees

Apr. 7, 2025 — Have you ever gone to a store or a restaurant where the music was so annoying that you walked right out? Now imagine what it must be like for the employees. In a new study, researchers found that when background music at a workplace is out of sync ...

Genes May Influence Our Enjoyment of Music

Apr. 2, 2025 — Does our ability to enjoy music have a biological basis? A genetic twin study shows that music enjoyment is partly heritable. Scientists uncovered genetic factors that influence the degree of music enjoyment, which were partly distinct from genes ...

Vocal Changes in Birds May Predict Age-Related Disorders in People, Study Finds

Mar. 16, 2025 — Neuroscientists have found a link between vocal changes and the aging brain in zebra finch songbirds, which could help lead to earlier diagnoses for disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's ...

Want to Climb the Leadership Ladder? Try Debate Training

Mar. 16, 2025 — Research finds people who learn the basics of debate are more likely to advance to leadership roles in U.S. organizations. A key reason seems to be that debate training makes employees more comfortable about being assertive in the ...

Uncovering Dementia's Environmental Triggers

Mar. 7, 2025 — A new study focuses on the powerful role our surroundings play in shaping dementia ...

The Art of Well-Being: Group Activities Shown to Ease Depression and Anxiety in Older Adults

Mar. 5, 2025 — Group arts interventions, such as painting, dance, or music, significantly reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in older adults, offering a powerful alternative to traditional treatments. The ...

Music Makes Us Move Even When We Don't Like It

Feb. 11, 2025 — The pleasurable urge to move to music -- to groove -- appears to be a physiological response independent of how much we generally enjoy music, according to a new article. That groove response is so strong it is even found in people with musical ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:13pm EDT

Adults Can Learn Absolute Pitch: New Research Challenges Long-Held Musical Belief

Feb. 16, 2025 — It's been a long-held belief that absolute pitch -- the ability to identify musical notes without reference -- is a rare gift reserved for a select ...

Music Can Touch the Heart, Even Inside the Womb

Feb. 4, 2025 — Researchers have used mathematical analysis tools to study the effect of classical music on a fetal heartbeat and identify patterns in heart rate variability. They recruited 36 pregnant women and ...

Research Shows How Music Can Reduce Distress

Dec. 19, 2024 — A new study has demonstrated for the first time how and why music can reduce distress and agitation for people with advanced dementia. The study involved interviews with staff and music therapists on ...

The Chilling Sound of the Aztec Death Whistle

Nov. 19, 2024 — The Aztec skull whistle produces a shrill, screaming sound. A study shows that these whistles have a disturbing effect on the human brain. The Aztecs may have deliberately used this effect in ...

Bach, Mozart or Jazz

Nov. 5, 2024 — Physicists have investigated to which extent a piece of music can evoke expectations about its progression. They were able to determine differences in how far compositions of different composers can ...

Britain's Brass Bands Older Than We Thought and Invented by Soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars

Oct. 30, 2024 — Military musicians returning from the Napoleonic wars established Britain's first brass bands earlier than previously thought, new research reveals. ...

Music Can Reveal Which Areas of the Brain Are Affected by Aging

Sep. 7, 2024 — Researchers are using works by Johann Sebastian Bach, along with MEG and MRI scans, to investigate how the brain compensates for age-related ...

Neuroscientists Explore the Intersection of Music and Memory

Aug. 28, 2024 — New research explores music's impact on learning, memory, and emotions in two studies. One reveals that familiar music can enhance concentration and learning, while the other demonstrates that music ...

Singing from Memory Unlocks a Surprisingly Common Musical Superpower

Aug. 14, 2024 — Psychologists studied 'earworms,' the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop, to show that highly accurate pitch memory is much more common than might be ...

Short, Intense Bursts of Exercise More Effective After Stroke Than Steady, Moderate Exercise

Aug. 11, 2024 — Significant improvements in aerobic fitness were noted after 12 weeks of high-intensity interval training sessions compared to traditional, moderate ...

New Study Sheds Light on the Role of Sound and Music in Gendered Toy Marketing

Nov. 6, 2024 — New research reveals that the music and soundscapes used in toy commercials are reinforcing rigid gender norms, shaping the way children perceive masculinity and femininity. The study uncovers how ...

Classical Music Lifts Our Mood by Synchronizing Our 'Extended Amygdala'

Aug. 9, 2024 — Whether Bach, Beethovan, or Mozart, it's widely recognized that classical music can affect a person's mood. Scientists use brainwave measurements and neural imaging techniques to show how ...

Visiting an Art Exhibition Can Make You Think More Socially and Openly. But for How Long?

Aug. 6, 2024 — A new study aimed to address the questions of whether art exhibitions can make us more empathic or even change our attitudes and behaviors? The researchers were able to show that, indeed, looking ...

Understanding the Synchronization of Physiological States During a Live Music Performance

July 2, 2024 — In a concert, members of the audience can respond emotionally to music, owing to their biological synchronization to the audio input. However, the mechanism underlying this biological response is ...

The 'Queen of the Night' Does Not Whistle

June 18, 2024 — Opera singers have to use the extreme limits of their voice range. Many pedagogical and scientific sources suggest that the highest pitches reached in classical singing can only be produced with a ...

Infants Hear Significantly More Speech Than Music at Home

May 30, 2024 — A new study has compared the amount of music and speech that children hear in infancy. Results showed that infants hear more spoken language than music, with the gap widening as the babies get ...

Is It a Sound of Music...or of Speech? Scientists Uncover How Our Brains Try to Tell the Difference

May 28, 2024 — Music and speech are among the most frequent types of sounds we hear. But how do we identify what we think are differences between the two? An international team of researchers mapped out this ...

Singing Repairs the Language Network of the Brain After a Cerebrovascular Accident

May 16, 2024 — Singing rehabilitates speech production in post-stroke aphasia. Researchers investigated the rehabilitative effect of singing on the ...

Singing Researchers Find Cross-Cultural Patterns in Music and Language

May 15, 2024 — Are acoustic features of music and spoken language shared across cultures? Researchers recorded themselves performing traditional music and speaking in their native language. In all 50+ languages, ...

Body Mapping Links Our Responses to Music With Their Degree of Uncertainty and Surprise

Apr. 4, 2024 — Music holds an important place in human culture, and we've all felt the swell of emotion that music can inspire unlike almost anything else. But what is it exactly about music that can bring on ...

Beethoven's Genes Reveal Low Predisposition for Beat Synchronization

Mar. 26, 2024 — Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in human history, has a rather low genetic predisposition for beat synchronization, according to a new ...

Exposure to Different Kinds of Music Influences How the Brain Interprets Rhythm

Mar. 4, 2024 — The human brain appears biased toward hearing and producing rhythms with simple integer ratios, but the favored ratios can vary greatly between different societies, according to a 15-country ...

Your Brain in the Zone: A New Neuroimaging Study Reveals How the Brain Achieves a Creative Flow State

Mar. 4, 2024 — A new neuroimaging study reveals how the brain gets to the creative flow ...

Pythagoras Was Wrong: There Are No Universal Musical Harmonies, New Study Finds

Feb. 27, 2024 — The tone and tuning of musical instruments has the power to manipulate our appreciation of harmony, new research shows. The findings challenge centuries of Western music theory and encourage greater ...

Live Music Emotionally Moves Us More Than Streamed Music

Feb. 26, 2024 — How does listening to live music affect the emotional center of our brain? A study has found that live performances trigger a stronger emotional response than listening to music from a device. ...

Music May Bring Health Benefits for Older Adults, Poll Suggests

Feb. 7, 2024 — Three-quarters of people age 50 to 80 say music helps them relieve stress or relax and 65% say it helps their mental health or mood, according to a recent poll. Meanwhile, 60% say they get energized ...

Jan. 30, 2024 — A new study has shown that music evokes similar emotions and bodily sensations around the ...

Playing an Instrument Linked to Better Brain Health in Older Adults

Jan. 29, 2024 — Engaging in music throughout your life is associated with better brain health in older age, according to a new study. Scientists working on PROTECT, an online study open to people aged 40 and over, ...

Research Team Breaks Down Musical Instincts With AI

Jan. 23, 2024 — A research team announced they have identified the principle by which musical instincts emerge from the human brain without special learning using an artificial neural network ...

Early Study Shows Health Benefits of Creative Arts Therapies and Nutrition Education for Postmenopausal Women

Jan. 13, 2024 — A recent study explored a new way to ease the transition with an art therapy intervention to address the health needs of overweight, postmenopausal ...