The Sound Health Network is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Renée Fleming.
Our mission is to promote research and public awareness about the impact of music on health and wellness. Visit our website here.
SHN Monthly Newsletter
May 2021:
Music and Developmental Differences
Participate in the NeuroArts Blueprint Survey

We invite you to participate in a survey conducted on behalf of the NeuroArts Blueprint: The Science of Arts, Health and Well-Being. The survey is intended to explore the science and practice of using art to advance health and mental well-being and to inform the emerging field of neuroarts. It should take about 15 minutes. Take the survey here.
In Conversation
with Lyn Bingham, DMA
Autism self-advocate, conductor,
and senior lecturer at the Blair School of Music
Growing up, Dr. Lyn Bingham vividly remembers her mother playing the piano.  “I loved to move freely about the room as she practiced, and I remember trying to match with my body all the phrasing, articulations, and dynamics as she played them. In the world of social confusion and the anxiety that comes with it, this music and movement pairing was the first thing that made any sense to me.”  

As a child with Asperger Syndrome on the Autism Spectrum, which often affects social interaction and nonverbal communication, Dr. Bingham always found gestural communications challenging to process and understand. But music opened a door to what would become her life’s work. There was “no context. No hidden social meaning to try to decipher. It was pure, unadulterated joy. It was freedom. Most importantly, it was me.” 
Dr. Bingham learned later that the movement she was employing was called phonomimetic gesture - a gesture for every sound and a sound for every gesture. Dr. Bingham went on to play double bass and eventually became a conductor, where her natural affinity for phonomimetic gesture served her well. “Like many young conductors, I cut my teeth on conducting orchestras in other countries overseas—particularly eastern Europe—where there was a fairly significant language barrier. Those experiences forced me to learn to use my hands rather than language to achieve the results I wanted.”  

On the faculty of the Blair School of Music since 1986, she teaches conducting, music theory, musicianship, and music education. Gradually, Dr. Bingham expanded her work to include training teachers on concepts of musical expression through movement and games, and serving the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) arts and education communities through public speaking engagements.  She is uniquely qualified to help people on the spectrum and their allies engage with music. 
She is especially passionate about helping children who, like her, are a part of the ASD community. For children with developmental differences, she advises parents to meet the child where they are; “I think it begins when we shift our perspectives from music-as-object to music-as-behavior. Musical behavior doesn’t have to be learning to play an instrument. Musical behavior can be manifested in many ways.” With so many music-making experiences available to us today, Dr. Bingham’s hope is that children will have the opportunity and encouragement to practice their musical behaviors in ways that are meaningful to them.  

Whatever the medium, Dr. Bingham believes that meaningful music-engagement practices are for everyone. “We are all musical beings... music is a behavior, not a thing. We all exhibit musical behaviors in highly diverse ways. I’m not sure that music is something that we learn. Rather I believe that music is something that we are.” 

To hear more insights from Lyn Bingham, DMA, join us on Wednesday, May 26, for our next webinar: Music And Developmental Differences. This webinar will also feature Miriam Lense, PhD, Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology and Director of the Music Cognition Lab at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Lense will discuss her research and clinical work, which focuses on infants, children, and adults with or at-risk for developmental differences, with a particular emphasis on individuals with ASD and those who have Williams syndrome, while Dr. Bingham will highlight her work collaborating with researchers who study music and ASD. 
Research Spotlight: Music and Developmental Differences

Aiming to understand how a parent-child integrated music class program could be used to promote community participation and family well-being, caregivers of preschoolers (2-5 years of age) with ASD and those of peer children with typical development (TD) were interviewed about their participation in a parent-child integrated music class program. 

This randomized controlled trial looked at 51 children ages 6-12 who either received music intervention for 8-12 weeks or a non-music intervention. Music was shown to improve social communication scores as well as increased functional connectivity in frontotemporal brain networks.

This review introduces the PRESS-Play framework, which conceptualizes musical activities for young children with ASD within an applied behavior analysis framework consistent with the principles of naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions. 

Using data from two pilot studies with 20 children with ASD, researchers illustrate how observational research methods can be used to measure important aspects of the social environment as well as engagement of potential underlying behavioral mechanisms that might reduce clinical symptoms. 

Beat perception in music has been proposed to be a human universal that may have its origins in adaptive processes involving temporal entrainment, such as social communication and interaction. Researchers examined beat perception skills in individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic, neurodevelopmental disorder.
Job Opportunities

Las Vegas, Nevada


Research Associate in the Department of Otolaryngology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern iCalifornia (USC)
Those interested should contact Carolina Abdala and/or Christopher Shera for more information and instructions on applying.



Research Fellow in Machine Learning for Audio Captioning, Centre for Vision Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP), University of Surrey, UK
Funding Opportunities

NEA Research Labs funds transdisciplinary research teams grounded in the social and behavioral sciences, yielding empirical insights about the arts for the benefit of arts and non-arts sectors alike.

Over the next five years, Creative Forces®: National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Military Healing Arts Network intends to provide $2.5 million in new research funding.

NEA Research Grants in the Arts funds research studies that investigate the value and/or impact of the arts, either as individual components of the U.S. arts ecology or as they interact with each other and/or with other domains of American life.

This funding opportunity is intended to: (1) increase our understanding of how music affects the brain when it is used therapeutically and/or (2) use that knowledge to better develop evidence-based music interventions to enhance health or treat specific diseases and disorders.

This funding opportunity is intended to: (1) increase our understanding of how music affects the brain when it is used therapeutically and/or (2) use that knowledge to better develop evidence-based music interventions to enhance health or treat specific diseases and disorders.

The purpose of this FOA is to promote innovative research on music and health with an emphasis on developing music interventions aimed at understanding their mechanisms of action and clinical applications for the treatment of many diseases, disorders, and conditions.