Jan 5, 2022 This video contains excerpts from an ARTSpeaks event held on November 8, 2021. Nina Kraus, Professor of Neurobiology, Otolaryngology; Hugh Knowles Chair; Fellow, Hugh Knowles Center at Northwestern University, is a scientist, inventor, and amateur musician who studies the biology of auditory learning. Through a series of innovative studies involving thousands of research participants from birth to age 90, her research has found that our lives in sound, for better (musicians, bilinguals) or worse (language disorders, concussion, aging, hearing loss), shape auditory processing. Kraus has invented new ways to measure the biology of sound processing in humans that provide unprecedented precision and granularity in indexing brain function. In a 2017 interview, Dr. Kraus said that music instruction, “not only improves communication skills and creates a brain and nervous system that is more attuned to sound, which is important for both music and language, music can fundamentally alter the nervous system to create better learners.” Consequently, music is, indeed, “the jackpot”. Her recent book, “Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World” is available wherever books are sold.
