• Are musicians better at identifying emotional cues in others?

    Why study music: part IVa About ten years ago, I was startled by a headline that, in essence, said if you wanted a spouse or friend who picked up your most subtle emotional cues, find a musician.  Intrigued, I tracked down the research behind the article and discovered the work of Dr. Nina Kraus, Director…

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  • Music and speech: Why study music, part IV

    Our lives in sound Our lives are filled with sound.  On average, Americans listen to music for more than 32 hours a week (Nielsen 2017 study).  We spend hours in conversation with co-workers, friends and families.  We hear the everyday sounds of traffic, appliances in our homes, television, athletic events, pets, and a great deal…

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  • Music and prehistoric cave art

    Lascaux Cave A few weeks ago, my husband and I visited Lascaux Cave, a well-known Paleolithic cave in southwestern France.  Many of you have seen illustrations like the one below –  one of about 600 cave paintings at Lascaux with another 1400 or so engravings dating to somewhere between 17,000 and 15,000 BCE. Actually one…

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  • How old is music?

    Early Music When musicians or music lovers talk about early music, we’re usually talking about Renaissance music, so roughly between 1400 – 1650, if you extend into the early Baroque.  So for us, early music goes back a few hundred years.  If you speak to an archaeologist, however, early music takes on a totally different…

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  • Music in a frame

    On a cold Friday morning in January 2007, a young man in jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap entered the Washington Metro at the L-Enfant Plaza station during the middle of rush hour, opened a violin case, took out his violin, and began to play – nothing unusual about that scenario since musicians frequent Metro stops…

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  • Musicians and hearing loss

    No doubt you have, on occasion, noticed teenagers congregating (some would say loitering) in shopping malls, outside of movie theaters or convenience stores, or in parking lots.  In 2005,  after his 17-yr old daughter was bullied and harassed by a gang of teens outside a local convenience store, a man in Wales named Howard Stapleton…

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The Musician’s Brain

The Musician’s Brain is a blog by Lois Svard, a musician who has written and lectured extensively about the applications of neuroscience research for the study and performance of music. She is Professor Emerita of Music at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and is the author of the book The Musical Brain about music, the brain, and learning.

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Absolute Pitch (3) Alzheimers and music (1) Amusia (1) Beat-deafness (1) Benefits of studying music (7) Brain Hardwiring for Music (2) Brain Patterns (1) Celebrate music (1) Cognition (1) Cognitive bias in music (1) Compulsion for music (2) Emotion (1) Exercise (1) Hearing (1) Hearing loss (1) Improvisation (1) Infants and language (1) Infants and music (5) Learning and memory (10) Medical problems of musicians (1) Memory (1) Mirror Neurons (8) Miscellaneous (1) Music and teamwork (1) Music and wellness (1) Music as therapy (1) Music Cognition (3) Music Education (1) Musician's Brain Webinar (1) Musicians' Anatomy (1) Music in times of crisis (3) Musings (2) Neuroplasticity (1) Origins of music (2) Performance (9) Practice (5) Rhythm (1) Sensory Information (0) Sleep (2) Synesthesia (5) Vision (1)