Bigger, Better Brains Powered by Music

I'm working with my teaching partner this week to prepare for our presentation on music and learning in early childhood.  My interest, and indeed much of my knowledge on this subject, comes from a time when I was the parent of a young child who loved Kindermusik.  I later trained as a teacher and offered the programme in Beijing.  At a conference I attended Dr. Daniel J. Levitin, author of the popular science book This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and a professor at McGill University came to speak.  I've been hooked every since about the power music holds for learning, and am so excited to share this with our community this weekend. 

It's been more than a decade since then and the scientific research that is being undertaken is staggering.  Every time I work on this project I end up spending hours weaving my way through places like the Science of Music, Auditory, Research and Technology (SMART) Lab at Ryerson University or the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University.   The research they are producing is absolutely fascinating and, more importantly, is making the connections between music and learning, brain development, and even recovery after brain injury.  

The workshop will mostly be hands on, but right now we are bogged down in words as we try to pare this enormous field of exciting research into a manageable snapshot we can deliver bilingually in 15 minutes or less before we starting playing with instruments and dancing.  Beginning to think the only way to go is this incredibly informative infographic.