The Neuroscience of Speech and Song

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.