Deepali, That is so interesting about Anna and her response to music. I am also surprised to hear that children with an ASD have a hard time distinguishing between music and speech sounds. Did Anna respond differently to music with words compared to music without words?
I remember reading an article about how the brain processes music with words (lyrics) compared to music that was purely instrumental. This article was in relation to the new trend for teenagers listening to I pods while doing homework. According to the article even if music with lyrics is background noise our brain tries to process and make sense of the words. In order to better focus on studying they recommended instrumental music with no words/lyrics.
I found one piece of research by Daniela Sammler of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. She did a study on how the brain process music and words (Lyrics) She concluded that the brain first deals with music and lyrics together. Then, after passing through the mid-STS more complex processing kicks in, such as understanding what lyrics mean, and the two are treated separately. "The more they are processed, the more they are separated," she says. See link http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn18626/dn18626-1_536.jpg
I recently discovered that one little girl on my case load that was very distractible and could not follow simple directions responded much more consistently when I sang the directions. I have no idea why this worked and I certainly cannot sing well but she loved it and was more responsive! Catherine
Deepali,
ReplyDeleteThat is so interesting about Anna and her response to music. I am also surprised to hear that children with an ASD have a hard time distinguishing between music and speech sounds. Did Anna respond differently to music with words compared to music without words?
I remember reading an article about how the brain processes music with words (lyrics) compared to music that was purely instrumental. This article was in relation to the new trend for teenagers listening to I pods while doing homework. According to the article even if music with lyrics is background noise our brain tries to process and make sense of the words. In order to better focus on studying they recommended instrumental music with no words/lyrics.
I found one piece of research by Daniela Sammler of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. She did a study on how the brain process music and words (Lyrics) She concluded that the brain first deals with music and lyrics together. Then, after passing through the mid-STS more complex processing kicks in, such as understanding what lyrics mean, and the two are treated separately. "The more they are processed, the more they are separated," she says. See link http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn18626/dn18626-1_536.jpg
I recently discovered that one little girl on my case load that was very distractible and could not follow simple directions responded much more consistently when I sang the directions. I have no idea why this worked and I certainly cannot sing well but she loved it and was more responsive!
Catherine