news 2012

Loud music damages your hearing ­— a warning that we're used to taking as fact. But surprisingly, little research has actually been done into how sustained exposure to loud music affects our hearing in the long term, and the results we do have are far from conclusive. A new research project taking place at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) National Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing, based at The University of Nottingham, is the first to explicitly examine the effect of long-term exposure to loud music.

Paleolithic paintings in El Castillo cave in Northern Spain date back at least 40,800 years - making them Europe's oldest known cave art, according to new research published today in Science. The practice of cave art in Europe thus began up to 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, indicating the paintings were created either by the first anatomically modern humans in Europe or, perhaps, by Neanderthals.

A year-long study on children's music-making indicates that playing music in groups on a regular basis greatly improves a child's ability to empathise with others.