I got rhythm... at the age of justfive months

Paul Jeeves

RESEARCH by Yorkshire academics has backed up theories that musicians are born with a sense of rhythm after babies displayed fledgling talents from as young as five months old.

A study by York University academics has found some infants may be born with a pre-disposition to move rhythmically in response to music.

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Children aged between five months and two years listened to a variety of audio stimuli including classical music, rhythmic beats and speech, and their spontaneous movements were recorded.

Professional ballet dancers were employed to analyse the extent to which the babies matched their movement to the music.

Dr Marcel Zentner, from York University’s Department of Psychology who worked with academics from Jyvaskyla University in Finland, said: “Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants.

“We also found that the better the children were able to synchronise their movements with the music, the more they smiled.”

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Meanwhile, a separate York University study has found that drugs used to treat cancer could have a major impact on infectious diseases. Anti-angiogenic drugs are used to try to prevent cancers from stimulating the growth of the blood vessels they need to survive and grow.

The study by the Centre for Immunology and Infection suggested the same drugs may help treat other conditions including visceral leishmaniasis, a flesh-eating disease which kills 70,000 people worldwide every year.

The boost to the immune response can increase the effectiveness of conventional treatments, allowing doctors to use lower doses of existing drugs.1

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