music and language

Is musical ability related to second-language acquisition? A meta-analysis

In our multicultural and interconnected world, the ability to learn new languages is important. However, there are significant differences in how successfully adults can learn aspects of non-native languages. Given robust relationships between …

Auditory temporal processing can predict reading measurements in neurotypical adults: evidence for cascading effects of low-level auditory processing on high-level cognitive ability

Accurate processing of auditory timing information has been proposed as crucial for the development of various complex cognitive abilities, such as literacy. However, empirical validation of this hypothesis has primarily involved using isochronous …

Music and language: Milestones of development

The human brain continues to mature throughout childhood, making our species particularly susceptible to experience. Given the diversity of music and language around the globe, how these are acquired during childhood is revealing about the feedback …

Do minor thirds characterize the prosody of sad speech?

Pitch can convey information about emotion in both spoken language and in music. Given this, do people use pitch to communicate emotion in similar ways across both domains? To investigate this question we look at intervals between the fundamental …

Relationship between musical and language abilities in post-stroke aphasia

**Background** The relationship between structural processing in music and language can be viewed from two perspectives: whether the neural processing of music and language recruits shared neural resources, and whether musical ability is associated …

Preserved processing of musical structure in a person with agrammatic aphasia

Evidence for shared processing of structure (or syntax) in language and in music conflicts with neuropsychological dissociations between the two. However, while harmonic structural processing can be impaired in patients with spared linguistic …

Prosodic structure as a parallel to musical structure

What structural properties do language and music share? Although early speculation identified a wide variety of possibilities, the literature has largely focused on the parallels between musical structure and syntactic structure. Here, we argue that …

A commentary on: 'Neural overlap in processing music and speech' (Peretz et al., 2015)

A commentary on Neural overlap in processing music and speech.

Processing structure in language and music: a case for shared reliance on cognitive control

The relationship between structural processing in music and language has received increasing interest in the past several years, spurred by the influential Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH; Patel, Nature Neuroscience, 6, …

Syntax in music and language: The role of cognitive control 

The relationship between structural (or syntactic) processing in music and in language is not yet clear. Evidence indicating that these two processes are shared conflicts with other results suggesting that they are largely distinct. These conflicting …