# Effect of music intervention on infants' brainstem encoding of speech

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2020 · $233,250

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Music learning that starts early in development has profound and long-lasting benefits later in life, within
and beyond the music domain, in important areas such as speech and language skills, cognitive skills
and social/emotional skills. Previously, work by the PI demonstrated that a short-term music
intervention at as early as 9 months of age, during the ‘sensitive period’ for speech learning, can
already affect cortical processing beyond music. That is, infant who underwent the music intervention
also exhibited enhanced cortical processing of nonnative speech compared to the controls who
underwent free play sessions. The proposed project aims to expand on these results and investigate
the extent of the effects from the music intervention in infancy, more specifically, whether the music
intervention can already modulate speech encoding at the lower level auditory brainstem.
Understanding this question is critical from a theoretical and an application perspective. Theoretically,
the results will improve the basic scientific understanding of mechanisms underlying the effects related
to music intervention and its interaction with early development and speech learning. In practice, the
knowledge we gain from the basic research will help future implementation of early music intervention
programs as an alternative method to improve early speech and later language learning, for typically
developing infants and more importantly, for infants at-risk for speech and language disorders. The first
study (Aim 1) will measure infants’ brainstem encoding of nonnative lexical tones at 7 months and 11
months of age. The results from this group will serve as controls for Aim 2. At the same time, the results
from Aim 1 will also establish the typical developmental trajectory for brainstem encoding of lexical
tones, which has not been established before. The results will thus also expand our current
understanding of behavioral and neural changes that take place during the ‘sensitive period’ for
phonetic learning. In the second study (Aim 2), infants will complete the previously-established music
intervention starting at 9 months of age, in addition to the brainstem measurements at 7 and 11 months
of age. Their results will be compared to the controls (Aim 1) to address the effects related to the music
intervention. Together, the proposed study will further our understanding of the effect related to music
intervention in infancy and its underlying mechanisms. This project will also help the PI to take a big
step towards her long-term goal to apply early music intervention to help infants at-risk for
communication disorders.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10016848
- **Project number:** 5R21NS114343-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Tian Zhao
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $233,250
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-15 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10016848

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10016848, Effect of music intervention on infants' brainstem encoding of speech (5R21NS114343-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10016848. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*