If musicality did not arise from language, where did it come from?

Recent interdisciplinary advances have transformed the study of the evolution of music. Rather than treating music as a cultural artifact, current research targets musicality — the biological capacity enabling humans to perceive, produce, and enjoy structured sound. Evidence from observations of infants, cross-cultural studies, and neuroscience shows that humans possess innate predispositions for rhythm, pitch, and temporal expectation that arise independently of training. Comparative studies have revealed that components of musicality have distinct evolutionary histories: primate research supports gradual development of rhythmic and audiomotor integration, while convergent traits in vocal-learning species highlight shared biological constraints. Neuropsychological and developmental findings have further shown that musicality is not reducible to language, drawing instead on perceptual, motor, and affective systems that likely predate speech. Collectively, these insights establish musicality as a fundamental cognitive capacity and provide a robust framework for investigating how its components evolved, how they function across species, and why music is central to human life.

But, if musicality did not arise from language, where did it come from? 

[Published in Current Biology as Honing (2026)]
 
Honing, H. (2026) The biology of musicality. Current Biology, 36(5), R177-R180;
Preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/j8x4w_v6;
Drawing courtesy of Marianne de Heer Kloots (mdhk.net).

A musical ape?

Music is universal in all human cultures, but why? What gives us the ability to hear sound as music? Are we the only musical species–or was Darwin right when he said every animal with a backbone should be able to perceive, if not enjoy music? 

This episode was written and produced by Ray Pang and Meredith Johnson. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Ray Pang. The editor is Audrey Quinn. Theme music by Henry Nagle, additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lee Roservere. 

Listen to the podcast here.

Why did we decide to revisit and overhaul our earlier beat perception studies?

Newborn baby participating in listening experiment
(courtesy Eszter Rozgonyiné Lányi).

[Published in Scientific American and MIT Press Reader]

In 2009, we found that newborns possess the ability to discern a regular pulse – the beat – in music. It’s a skill that might seem trivial to most of us but that’s fundamental to the creation and appreciation of music. The discovery sparked a profound curiosity in me, leading to an exploration of the biological underpinnings of our innate capacity for music, commonly referred to as “musicality.”

In a nutshell, the experiment involved playing drum rhythms, occasionally omitting a beat, and observing the newborns’ responses. Astonishingly, these tiny participants displayed an anticipation of the missing beat, as their brains exhibited a distinct spike, signaling a violation of their expectations when a note was omitted. This discovery not only unveiled the musical prowess of newborns but also helped lay the foundation for a burgeoning field dedicated to studying the origins of musicality.

Yet, as with any discovery, skepticism emerged (as it should). Some colleagues challenged our interpretation of the results, suggesting alternate explanations rooted in the acoustic nature of the stimuli we employed. Others argued that the observed reactions were a result of statistical learning, questioning the validity of beat perception being a separate mechanism essential to our musical capacity. Infants actively engage in statistical learning as they acquire a new language, enabling them to grasp elements such as word order and common accent structures in their native language. Why would music perception be any different?

To address these challenges, in 2015, our group decided to revisit and overhaul our earlier beat perception study, expanding its scope, method and scale, and, once more, decided to include, next to newborns, adults (musicians and non-musicians) and macaque monkeys.

 [...] Continue reading in The MIT Press Reader.

Are we born to be musical?

'From the beat we hear while still in our mother’s stomachs [sic], to the teenage anthems we blare out of speakers, to the songs that make and break our hearts, music is a fundamental part of being human. But why do we move to a rhythm, are we actually born to be musical, and how does music really shape who we are?'

This is the first episode of The Rhythm of Life, a series from BBC Reel exploring the power of music.