1 . It’s hard to say why, but it’s just true: Music is good for you. It can calm your spirit and help you vent (发泄) your anger.     1    . But there’s one surprising yet well-documented effect that has really surprised people. Music lessons are very good for language comprehension — and they might even be better than reading lessons.

    2    . But in this new study from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), researchers were able to see music lessons improve word comprehension right before their eyes. Led by Robert Desimone, the director of McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the team tested 74 children between the ages of four and five to see how their growing language skills were affected by piano lessons.

The 74 participants were divided into three groups.     3    . The other two had their weekly academic lessons supplemented with three 45-minute lessons per week — the first got piano lessons and the second took part in reading lessons.

What are the results? The ones who received a little extra learning every week outperformed those who just continued on with their normal studies.     4    . Perhaps even more surprisingly, the children who took the music lessons even outperformed the ones who took the reading lessons when it came to telling the difference between two words that were very similar.

“That’s a big thing for kids in learning language: being able to hear the differences between words,” Desimone said in a statement. “They really benefited from that.” To the researchers, the results point to one clear conclusion:     5    

2 . When Capt. Greg Galeazzi joined the Army seven years ago, he was well aware of the risks of injuries or even death he would face. In 2011, the risks became Galeazzi’s reality — he got terribly injured in an explosion where he lost his double legs. “I was a shell of a man,” he said. “Who I was, was gone.”

Before his injury, playing the guitar had been a special pastime for Galeazzi. Music had always been important to him. He felt deep sadness because he thought he’d lost his ability to play music.

However, everything changed when Galeazzi joined MusiCorps, a music rehabilitation (康复) program for severely wounded soldiers who are recovering at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “We match the injured troops with professional musicians,” said Arthur Bloom, who founded the program in 2007. “They help wounded soldiers play music and recover their lives.”

Bloom, a graduate of the Yale School of Music, offers his services to patients at Walter Reed who have an interest in playing an instrument. Program participants practice technique, write and record music. Or they may just get together for a jam session (即兴演奏会).

The journey to recovery for many soldiers is a long one. It can require dozens of operations and many years spent in hospitals. There’s so much downtime at Walter Reed, and that’s what they fill up with music.

Since 2007, Bloom and his group have helped hundreds of wounded soldiers. For Galeazzi, joining MusiCorps has helped restore his confidence and made him more optimistic about his future. “Something survived that horrible injury in Afghanistan,” Galeazzi said. “Arthur and his program changed my outlook on what is possible.”

“I’ve seen guys going through such a hard time with their injuries that they are very withdrawn,” Bloom said. “The music becomes their new way of communicating. It can be just as powerful as the spoken word. By injecting music into this space, we can inject life.”

5 . An international group of electronic music composers is taking beats from the dance club to jungles and forests and back, all to help save nature’s greatest singers. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean is a new album that includes the sounds of endangered birds. The album will come out next month, whose proceeds will go directly towards efforts to save birds.

The whole project was born out of this idea of trying to combine birdsong, electronic music and conservation. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean was organized by activist, music producer, Robin Perkins. He invited artists from each of the endangered birds ‘homelands to build their own songs around the birds’ songs. There are contributions from ten artists in eight different countries.

First single Black Catbird was created by The Garifuna Collective, from Belize. Al Obando, guitarist and producer of the group, always took in national parks and viewed birds when on the road with the band. “There are no trails, and there are no signs there to tell you about what you’re seeing,” Obando says. “So we’re trying to do something for the birds and nature tourism.”

Another musician who responded to Robin’s call is Tamara Montenegro, an artist from Nicaragua. She was shocked to hear of the serious situation of the Guardabarranco after being approached: “This beautiful creature I grew up adoring also faced the influence of the systematic human activities”. In response, she created a song inspired by this bird and the challenges it faces to live naturally.

The new album is the second edition, following on from A Guide to the Birdsong of South America, produced by Robin in 2015. That first album has raised, to date, over $15,000 benefitting conservation projects in South America. As with the first album, all of the money from the sales of the new album will support specific organizations, including Birds Caribbean.

7 . My violin is like a soul mate that whispers words of wisdom to me. Together, we’ve gone through both tears and happiness.

About 12 years ago, I made acquaintance with it following an order from my mom. Many hours of boredom were spent practicing it. And to make things worse, the disappointment in my teacher’s eyes as I played the wrong notes was like an invisible hammer, striking on my heart. One day, I finally decided: I hate it!

By chance, things changed when I was seven. I was at home lying on the sofa, wondering how those famous violinists dealt with this terrible dilemma. I searched online for the E-minor Concerto, a well-known violin work by German composer Felix Mendelssohn, and listened to it.

A beautiful and mysterious sound came from the violin as the bow moved across it. It was like the music slid over the flowers, rose up, and started to fill the air. The violin’s voice woke up the sun, made the trees green, and freshened the air. As the music changed, the sky turned back to gray. A gloomy shade covered the grass as all the sunshine disappeared. I could hear children crying and men shouting. It was like an invisible claw had grabbed my heart tightly, making it unable to beat.

That glorious day set off my passion and interest in violin — I grabbed mine and never let it go. Before the memories faded, I stared at my instrument. Without hesitating, I picked it up, rosined (用松香擦) the bow, and began to play. Peace filled my heart.

My violin has been by my side for 12 years. When I feel happy, an energetic tune makes it even better; when I’m deep in sorrow, a peaceful tune washes it away, when I’m walking on air, feeling especially pleased with my achievements, solemn (庄严的) tunes calm me down. Gradually, it has become a part of my life.

My violin, shall I compare you to a summer’s day?

8 . Imagine, John Lennon’s most famous song was recently voted “Britain’s favourite song of all time”. It’s an idealistic song about peace and hope for a better world. “Imagine all the people living life in peace”. The song was a big hit in 1971 and again in 1981 Lennon was murdered in New York. It became a hit for a third time after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

But who really wrote the song? Until recently the answer to this question was always John Lennon. But on a TV program this week, Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, spoke for the first time about how she in fact helped to write the song.

Ono said that the idea and inspiration (灵感) for Imagine came from some of her poems that John Lennon was reading at that time. The poems began with the word “Imagine”. Ono said, “During the Second World War, my brother and I were terribly hungry. I imagined delicious menus for him and he began to smile. If you think something impossible, you can imagine it and make it happen.”

In an interview just before he died, Lennon admitted that Yoko deserved credit for Imagine. He said a lot of it came from her, from her book of poems. Imagine this, imagine that.

Ono said that some of the song was written when they were flying across the Atlantic, and the rest was written on the piano in their bedroom at their home in England. Ono said, “The song speaks about John’s dream for the world. It was something he really wanted to say.” Imagine became a popular song for peace activists everywhere.

In March 2002, the airport in his hometown of Liverpool was renamed John Lennon Airport. A sign above the main entrance has a line from Imagine ‘Above us only sky’.

9 . Chinese traditional painting and dance are two vital parts of the art world. But what about when they meet each other?

This year, a dance drama titled Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting (《只此青绿》) was staged on CCTV’ Spring Festival Gala and went viral.

According to CCTV, this poetic dance programme was inspired by the about 900-year-old Chinese painting A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains(《千里江山图》). Created by Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng at the age of 18, the painting is amazing in its marvellous size, rich coloration and the expressive details, reported CCTV. It shows a Chinese blue-green landscape: mountains and groupings of infinite rise and fall between cloudless sky and rippling water.

When the dancers moved elegantly, audiences seemed to be looking at the moving mountains and rivers. “It brings me a pure experience of beauty. It is not only dance but also an ‘exhibition’. Vast mountains and rivers are coming to life!” An Internet user Mo Weisha wrote in a review, “About a thousand years later, green mountains and rivers still wow people as they did long ago.

Some people even decided to watch the dance again when it was staged in the theaters later. In fact, in recent years, more and more modern shows highlight Chinese traditional culture and have received warm welcome. As for why, it is due to people’s great love for traditional culture.

“The younger generations have grown up with a more open mindset. They embrace Chinese culture and are proud of it. ”Yao Wei, director of Henan TV Station’s Innovation Center, told China Daily.

10 . Music is not just a set of sounds and rhythms. Its influence on brain is much deeper than any other human experience. Keep on reading to know all these amazing power of music.

A recent study suggests that preterm (早产的) babies appear to experience less pain and feed more when listening to music. Experts led by Dr. Manoj Kumar of the University of Alberta,Canada,found that music had a beneficial effect on reducing pain for preterm babies experiencing painful medical tests. It also appeared to benefit full-term babies during operations.

Many people experiencing brain damage have speech and movement-related problems. Music can help recover from brain injuries. As a different and effective treatment, doctors often advise such patients to listen to good music to improve the parts of the brain responsible for these two functions. When people with neurological (神经的) disorders hear a musical beat, it helps them to regain a balanced walk.

Though music cannot make deafness disappear, it really can stave off the loss of hearing. There was an experiment involving 163 people where 74 were musicians. Participants were asked to pass some listening tests. Musicians heard the sounds better than non-musicians, and this difference gets clearer with age. This means that a 70-year-old musician hears better than a 50-year-old non-musician, even in a noisy environment.

Besides, music mends a broken heart. It is not about a thrown-away love,   but about a heart attack. The matter is that music can help people recover from a heart attack or heart operation by reducing blood pressure, slowing down the heartbeat rate, and reducing anxiety. Listening to the quality music produces positive emotions, improves the movement of blood, and expands blood vessels, thus, promoting quick recovery of the whole cardiovascular (心血管的) system.