music and the brain

For some time, I've followed the New York Times "Most Emailed Articles" feed on Reader. I find it a good way to ensure that my reading material is both well-written, topical, and popular (to NYT readers).

Here's a quotation from an interesting one recently:

Both species are vocal learners, with the ability to imitate sounds. We share that rare skill with parrots. In that one respect, our brains are more like those of parrots than chimpanzees. Since vocal learning creates links between the hearing and movement centers of the brain, I hypothesized that this is what you need to be able to move to beat of music.