Reflections & Insight

Science all but confirms that humans are hard-wired to respond to music. Studies also suggest that someday music may even help patients heal from Parkinson’s disease or a stroke.

In The Power of Music, Elena Mannes explores how music affects different groups of people and how it could play a role in health care.

Mannes tracked the human relationship with music over the course of a life span. She tells NPR’s Neal Conan that studies show that infants prefer “consonant intervals, the ...

Many musicians have an instinctive understanding of how musical sound interacts with our bodies. They know — they feel — that sound impacts our bodies in a way no other art does. Opera singer Irene Gubrud says, “As a very young child, I experienced who I was through sound. I felt whole.”

Daniel Bernard Roumain, a young cross-genre violinist who is known as DBR, thinks one reason music is so powerful is that sound actually penetrates our bodies: “You know when ...