Is Singing an Evolutionary Accident or a Critical Way to Connect?

Scientific American associate news editor and music enthusiast
Allison Parshall takes Science Quickly through what we know about
how singing came to be. Scientists aren’t sure why humans evolved
to sing, but commonalities in traditional music offer clues to how
the practice evolved. Neuroscience shows us where speech and
singing live in the brain and what information the forms hold. And
an upcoming experiment will look into how singing might make us
more connected to one another. Recommended reading: New Folk Song
Analysis Finds Similarities around the World How Artificial
Intelligence Helped Write This Award-Winning Song E-mail us at
sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or
ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every
day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in
Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by
Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and
Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with
guest Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with
fact-checking by Marielle Issa, Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck.
The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about
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