Featured series 
Tag: Samuel Mehr
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Nation & World
When you talk silly to baby, the world joins in
Study finds striking similarities in infant-directed speech and song in cultures spanning six continents.
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Nation & World
Frère Jacques, are you sleeping?
Researchers at Harvard’s Music Lab have determined that American infants relaxed when played lullabies that were unfamiliar and in a foreign language.
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Nation & World
Music everywhere
Scientists at Harvard published a study on music as a cultural product, which examines what features of song tend to be shared across societies.
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Nation & World
Playing our song
Samuel Mehr has long been interested in questions of what music is, how music works, and why music exists. To help find the answers, he’s created the Music Lab, an online, citizen-science project aimed at understanding not just how the human mind interprets music, but why music is a virtually ubiquitous feature of human societies.
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Nation & World
What a difference a year of data science makes
After a successful first year, the Harvard Data Science Initiative puts its focus on five new research areas and four new fellows.
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Nation & World
Songs in the key of humanity
A new Harvard study suggests that people around the globe can identify lullabies, dancing songs, and healing songs — regardless of the songs’ cultural origin — after hearing just a 14-second clip.
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Nation & World
NIH makes $8.5M investment in promising projects
Eight Harvard scientists will receive nearly $8.5 million in funding through the National Institutes of Health’s High Risk, High Reward program to support research.
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Nation & World
Why sing to baby? If you don’t, you’ll starve
A new study suggests that infant-directed song evolved as a way for parents to signal to children that their needs were being met, while leaving time for other tasks, like food foraging or caring for other offspring.
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Nation & World
Muting the Mozart effect
Though it has been embraced by everyone from advocates for arts education to parents hoping to encourage their kids to stick with piano lessons, two new studies conducted by Harvard researchers show no effect of music training on the cognitive abilities of young children.
