The Neuroscience of Speech and Song
Thursday 1st May 2025, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
Every syllable and every song comes from a 1kg lump of cells in our skulls that we call the brain, and that’s not half of what it does! Understanding how the brain works is important, but understandably this can get a little complicated and sometimes even a little intimidating.
The Neuroscience of Speech and Song offers an engaging and accessible introduction to the fascinating interface between the brain and some of the things that we use it for. This course is designed to unravel the complex processes underlying how we speak and sing, using simple and accessible language.
The mind and the brain are two sides of the same coin. You would expect an expert in digestion to have a working knowledge of the stomach, wouldn’t you? In just the same way we might expect that an expert in certain kinds of human behaviours -like speaking and singing- should have some understanding of how the human brain is able to do these things.
This course will start from basics and assume very little prior knowledge. We will cover the basic structure of the brain and how it works in general, then narrow in on specific processes that are relevant to speech and song. Examples may be drawn from clinical cases such as Parkinson’s Disease because understanding ways in which the brain sometimes does not work as it should can help us understand how it typically would.
Dr Michel Belyk
Dr Michel Belyk is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill University. He studies the human voice, all the things that it says, and how it is able to say them.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Thursday 1st May 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Thursday 8th May 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
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5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Thursday 22nd May 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
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5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
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This five-part certificate course is designed to help participants learn the theory and practice of trauma-informed approaches. The concepts and activities included are tailored to meet the needs of voice specialists who want to acquire more specific tools to navigate the space with their students and colleagues.
Tuesday 6th May 2025
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Wednesday 7th May 2025
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Friday 9th May 2025
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Coaching (ACT) is an empirically-supported psychotherapy & coaching intervention for a variety of common issues facing student and professional musicians from across the world. Some of these include performance anxiety, perfectionism & self-criticism, procrastination, and work-related stress & burnout.
Wednesday 7th May 2025
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Wednesday 14th May 2025
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Wednesday 4th June 2025
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12 week course! Sharpen your coaching skills, discover new tools, and learn how to connect more deeply with your clients in our advanced certificate in accents and phonetics for coaching actors. The course provides an in-depth look at some of the key fundamental aspects of coaching accents, like phonetics and prosody, as well as introducing some theory and practice-based concepts relating to the complexities of this field, such as coaching for neurodiverse performers, English as an additional language (EAL) speakers and identity politics.