Translational music education

Learning music belongs to the core tasks of music education, alongside psycho-affective responses, cognitive understanding, aesthetic immersion and creative activities. While all these performances are inextricably intertwined with central-nervous processes, music educational theories and models are markedly lacking neuroscientific substantiation. Regardless of these shortcomings, a wealth of studies on neuro-cognitive music processing may profoundly elucidate music educational topics, hence the idea to bridge the gap between music-neuro-lab outcomes and music educational practice. Regarding that about 30 years ago translational medicine was designed to improve the application of lab-derived results in clinical practise – shortly ‘bench-to-bedside’ – the novel term ‘translational music education’ was coined. Integrating music-related psycho-biological findings gives rise to epistemological meta-syntheses and theoretical frameworks, alongside comparative research on system compatibility between music educational models and relevant lab-data of music processing. This helps to improve the scientific reliability of music educational theories and highlights distinct benefits of music education such as music as a powerful booster of neuroplasticity, which is the basis of all learning and developmental processes. Distinct interdisciplinary and international research collaboration is needed to promote translational music education, which is expected to increase the recognition of music education within the multifaceted world of sciences, alongside significant improvements of teaching techniques.