Currently, several extensive national and international collaborative projects are underway in which learning and its underlying factors are being comprehensively investigated using music. In addition, basic mechanisms of learning are being studied without a connection to music in many research studies.
The most extensive national project merging the efforts of the academic and private sector concluded at the end of 2022: CREDU, a consortium project involving six companies and two universities (University of Helsinki, University of Jyväskylä). This project approached the diversity of learning by utilizing survey, observation, and interview methods, VR technology, acoustics measurements, and brain research. Research was conducted in kindergartens, schools, and in collaboration with companies.
The most significant international project involves cooperation between Tervaniemi and Beijing Normal University. In collaboration with Professor Tao, it investigates the impact of one-year-long music and language club activities on the development of primary school children. The project's first publication in the journal Cerebral Cortex showed how both music and language clubs promote the preconscious processing of auditory information.
As part of Peixin Nie's doctoral thesis, a working memory study conducted in the Zoom environment compared speakers of different languages and individuals with varying musical backgrounds. This project is conducted in collaboration with Prof. Barbara Tillmann.
University lecturer Tanja Linnavalli is currently leading a two-year follow-up study MUSPRO investigating whether regular music activities in kindergartens can support children's social skills development. In addition to the possible positive effects of music, the project will also investigate the potential of physical activity to support the development of social and behavioural skills.
Docent Ritva Torppa leads the international project "MULAPAPU - How musical training and singing improve speech and language skills of children with hearing loss". The project investigates the development of spoken language, music and speech perception, and singing skills of hearing- impaired children under 6 years of age. Of particular interest is to show, how these skills connect linguistic and musical activities particularly in the home context. The project has included a music intervention with hearing impaired children and their parents (LapCI Association/STEA-funded speech music play school) and has also used modern educational and brain research methods such as a tablet app and fNIRS.
Postdoctoral researcher Kaisamari Kostilainen is currently working on her postdoctoral project. The aim of the NASMUS (neonatal abstinence syndrome and music) project, carried out in cooperation with Helsinki University Hospital, is to investigate the pathophysiology of withdrawal symptoms in newborns and the short- and long-term effects of medication (such as morphine, phenobarbital). The aim is also to study the effects of multisensory intervention (incl. singing) on newborn withdrawal symptoms and the effects of family-centered music therapy on the interaction and attachment between a newborn with withdrawal symptoms and a mother with substance use disorder.
Professor Minna Huotilainen and Research Director Mari Tervaniemi have two ongoing projects investigating the psychophysiological and brain correlates of music performance. In Huotilainen’s study, four singers are being monitored during their singing. In Tervaniemi’s study, classical musicians taking part on course on improvisation are monitored by EEG recordings before and after the course. Her project is introduced in an article in Finnish Music Quarterly written by Wif Stenger. Together, these studies exemplify the interest of the Brain, Music, and Learning team to take studies “from the lab into real life contexts” as emphasized by Tervaniemi in her recent review in TINS.
The Brain, Music and Learning research group started in the early 2000s when three ambitious international doctoral researchers came to the cognitive brain research unit to pursue postgraduate studies – Elvira Brattico with the background of philosophic psychology combined with music studies, Nikolai Novitski from physiology and biology and Titia van Zuijen from psychology. Docent and university lecturer Mari Tervaniemi, who wrote her doctoral thesis in 1997 about auditory learning and musicianship, acted as their supervisor together with academy professor Risto Näätänen.
Meanwhile Tervaniemi initiated extensive intervention and follow-up studies about learning and rehabilitation. First study conducted with Irma Järvelä and Minna Huotilainen was a follow-up study concerning children with music practice. Their neurocognitive development was followed up from age 7 to adulthood by Vesa Putkinen (PhD, Psych) and Katri Saarikivi (PhD, Psych). After that, Teppo Särkämö (PhD, Psych) joined the research group as a doctoral researcher, and from his work it was later shown that listening to favorite music has versatile effects on the rehabilitation of cerebral infarction patients. Nowadays associate professor Särkämö has his own research group MART.
Tervaniemi also expanded her theoretical and empirical knowledge about the brain basis of music and language/speech – what they have in common and the differences between them. As a result of her research visits to Leipzig University and Max Planck Institute in 2001–2002, she demonstrated that speech and music sounds are processed in separate brain areas, and investigated how musical practice affects this processing. Together with Professor Kenneth Hugdahl, who later received ERC Funding, they published a review article about the topic in 2003. Tervaniemi also showed that the basic acoustic features characteristic of the native language affect the preconscious perception of sounds.
From the 2010s onwards, the Brain, Music and Learning research group has also studied musicians stage fright, neuro- and cognitive processes of the aesthetic of music, brain basis of musical emotions, brain processing of chords and consonance/dissonance, transfer effects of music learning on cognitive functions and dance lessons’ effects on brain functions. Effects of music playschool on linguistic skills, effects of music on development of children with hearing impairment, brain basis of susceptibility to noise and the possibilities of music to support development of premature babies have also been studied. You can find links to the doctoral theses about these in Publications.