A new study by MIT researchers shows that music lessons can help develop a child’s language skills by improving their ability to differentiate between different pitches, reports Kashmira Gander for Newsweek. The researchers concluded that, “musical training helps to improve language skills, and could even be more beneficial than giving children additional reading lessons.”

A new study co-authored by MIT researchers uncovers evidence that music lessons can help improve a child’s language skills, according to Xinhua. The researchers found that, “musical training is at least as beneficial in improving language skills, and possibly more beneficial, than offering children extra reading lessons.”

ABC News reporter Denise Powell highlights a new study by MIT researchers that shows that music education could help a child’s language skills. Powell explains that, “the results of this study give a boost to the idea of music training in kindergarten students as a method of enhancing the way brain cells and neurons process and respond to pitch.”

Fast Company reporter Steven Melendez writes that CSAIL researchers have created a new system that allows a robot to detect human brainwave patterns so it knows when it made a mistake. Melendez explains that, “Teaching robots to understand human nonverbal cues and signals could make them safer and more efficient at working with people.”

MIT researchers have developed a system that allows people to use a combination of brain waves and muscle signals to stop and redirect a robot, writes John Biggs for TechCrunch. “The machine adapts to you, and not the other way around,” explains graduate student Joseph DelPreto.

MIT researchers have developed a system that “lets a person control a robotic arm with brainwaves and subtle hand gestures,” reports Jesus Diaz for Co.Design. According to Prof. Daniela Rus, the goal is “to develop robotic systems that are a more natural and intuitive extension of us.”

In an article published by Wired, Jordana Cepelewicz highlights a study co-authored by Prof. Earl Miller that examines the capacity limit for the human brain’s working memory. Cepelewicz explains that the research, “not only provides insights into memory function and dysfunction, but also offers further evidence for a burgeoning theory of how the brain processes information.”

Cate McQuaid of The Boston Globe reviews an MIT Museum exhibit showcasing the drawings of neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Paired with contemporary brain imaging, the exhibition lets observers, “vault through illuminated brain matter as if you were the USS Enterprise shifting into warp drive,” writes McQuaid.

A new study by MIT scientists shows how two proteins work to ensure that memory is encoded within minutes, according to Xinhua. The study, “also provided new hints about how problems involving these two proteins in other parts of the brain, such as the frontal cortex, could undermine cognition in those diseases.”

Professors Edward Boyden and Feng Zhang have been named to the 2018 class of Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators, reports Jonathan Saltzman for The Boston Globe. “We selected these scientists because they know how to ask hard and interesting questions with skill and intellectual courage,” says David Clapham, vice president and chief scientific officer of the institute.

WBUR’s Maria Garcia explores an exhibit at the MIT Museum of Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s drawings of the human brain. Prof. Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, explains that, “there's no question that these kinds of circuit diagrams that Cajal was giving us are telling us a great deal about what makes us, us."

“The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal” is currently on exhibit at the MIT Museum through the end of 2018. The show features drawings by Cajal that “so effectively illustrate now-basic neurological concepts that they are still used in neuroscience textbooks today,” writes Zoë Schlanger for Quartz.

Bucking conventional wisdom, research co-authored by Prof. Josh Tenenbaum shows that “picking up the subtleties of grammar in a a second language does not fade until well into the teens,” writes Dana G. Smith for Scientific American. “To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.”

MIT researchers have identified the brain circuit required for observational learning, reports Xinhua. According to the study, the area involved in evaluating social information is more active when witnessing an experience and “relays information about the experience” to the region important for processing emotions.

New research suggests “children are highly skilled at learning the grammar of a new language up until the age of 17 or 18, much longer than previously thought,” reports Kashmira Gander in Newsweek. “We may need to go back to the drawing board in trying to explain why adults have trouble learning language,” Joshua Hartshorne, who co-wrote the study as a postdoc at MIT, tells Gander.