"WTHERE words fail, music speaks." Though these words, from the pen of Hans Christian Andersen, are an appealing notion, the idea that there might be universals in music which transcend cultural boundaries has generally been met with scepticism by scholars working in the field. That scepticism may, however, be unwarranted, for research published in Current Biology this week by Samuel Mehr and Manvir Singh of Harvard University provides evidence that music does indeed permit the communication of simple ideas between people even when they have no language in common.
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机译：“说话失败，音乐说话。”尽管从汉斯·克里斯蒂安·安徒生（Hans Christian Andersen）的笔中得出的这些词语是一个吸引人的概念，但从事该领域工作的学者们普遍对音乐中可能存在超越文化边界的普遍性这一观念表示怀疑。然而，对于哈佛大学塞缪尔·梅尔（Samuel Mehr）和曼维尔·辛格（Manvir Singh）本周发表在《当代生物学》上的研究，这种怀疑可能没有根据。这提供了证据，即使人们没有共同语言，音乐确实可以在人与人之间传达简单的想法。
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