Singing as the optimal educational medium - Part II Neuroscience

I want to analyze songs and signing from a neuroscience perspective and show that it has all the qualities to make an optimal educational medium. Songs has several unique cognitive aspects. The first is its sequence-memory aspect and by this I mean that once you know a song, even hearing the first few notes, you can recite the song completely. Even more than that, if you hear a note in the middle of a song, you can continue with no problem reciting it. However, it is almost impossible to recite the song backward in time, i.e. from start to finish. In order to do that, you need to re-sing the song from the beginning each time. The second aspect is song's catchiness and by this I mean our extraordinary ability to remember songs from first hearing. This field has been studied, but I'm not certain as to the degree we fully understand why (more on this below). Songs, in this aspect, are very different from poems or any other non-musical verbal medium. It is the rhythm and fluency of the song that makes them so memorable, in my opinion. I propose a project to find out the exact border between songs and poems, in that how much rhythm is required for us to learn and remember them.

The next aspect is the neurobiological one. Memories are created and recalled by patterns of activations of neuronal cell firing. There is a vast network of neurons that form an intricate and complex connectivity pattern and the sequence of activation determines the memory being recalled. Note that a specific neuron spiking may be enough to cause a recall, or other behavioral outcomes, but the memory itself is stored across a plethora of neurons. I believe that singing has that unique aspect of optimal recall due to their rhythm and fluency, mentioned above. I believe that opposed to a story or a poem, the temporal aspect of songs somehow resonate with the neuronal activation patterns. Furthermore, as opposed to music, which may also be unique in the former aspect, we have quite a large chunk of brain associated with language. I believe that this unique combination of a verbal and a rhythmic component is what makes songs so memorable. I propose a project in which activation of neuronal cells resonate with their inherent network activation and show that in the human auditory cortex and language areas, these activations occur only, or mostly, during singing.

To sum up the neuroscience aspect of singing as the optimal educational medium, I believe that for some bizarre reason, our brain is wired such that songs are optimal in the encoding and retrieving of memory. This grants us the opportunity to use them as an educational tool, if memory is required.