ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a scientific area that is a relative newcomer to singing studies. Increasingly with new technologies, neuroscientists are able to observe many of the physiological brain changes produced by singing and listening to voices. The chapter describes three areas of imaging and neurochemistry relating to the driving aspect of vocal perception and production, the brain. Descriptions of musical disturbances linked to brain damage date back to the nineteenth century. Post-surgical patient observation has also contributed a crucial body of research to our understanding of brain functions. The modern profession of music therapy (MT) developed after the First World War, when musicians played in veterans hospitals, hoping to alleviate patient suffering. Though its purview goes well beyond singing, MT was marginalized in medical hospitals through much of the twentieth century. Finally, the chapter reviews a few ways that singing's good effect has been used to address modern problems.
