Briefs
Short notes on the week in sound — the news, read for you.
Brain recordings decode imagined melodies, roughly one note in four
In 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the cortex, a Seoul National University team predicted the contour of silently imagined children’s songs at 26%…
FNIH launches a Music as Medicine neuroscience initiative with Renée Fleming
The Foundation for the NIH announced the program on July 2 with soprano Renée Fleming, drummer Mickey Hart and Jim Weiss; the stated aim…
UC Irvine hosts a two-day music and medicine conference October 28
HARMONICS 2026 brings MedRhythms CEO Brian Harris and flutist Emi Ferguson to the UCI Student Center, with 14 CMTE and 9 CME credits for…
Seniors who kept playing an instrument held onto working memory
Kyoto University followed adults who started lessons at an average age of 73; four years on, those who quit lost verbal working memory and…
Music therapy lowered cravings in a 16-person addiction pilot
Anglia Ruskin researchers recorded EEG across six weekly sessions at a London addiction service; cravings dropped after sessions and frontal beta activity fell versus…
Blocking one signal turns ear support cells into hair cells
Tel Aviv University and colleagues report in Science Advances that inhibiting the Notch pathway converts cochlear supporting cells into the sensory cells mammals cannot…
Universal and Apple release 151 pop songs with beats mixed underneath
Universal’s Sollos unit embeds gamma, theta and delta beats under Sam Smith, Olivia Dean and others for World Mental Health Day; the evidence is…
Rice wins $3.9M to test whether composing music protects aging brains
A five-year National Institute on Aging trial will put 210 adults over 65 with mild cognitive impairment through a six-week composition course, tracked with…