This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

by Daniel J. Levitin Narrated by Daniel J. Levitin

Overview

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life-even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last be- coming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature, including:
¿ Are our musical preferences shaped in utero?
¿ Is there a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music?
¿ What do PET scans and MRIs reveal about the brain's response to music?
¿ Is musical pleasure different from other kinds of pleasure?

This Is Your Brain on Music explores cultures in which singing is considered an essential human function, patients who have a rare disorder that prevents them from making sense of music, and scientists studying why two people may not have the same definition of pitch. At every turn, this provocative work unlocks deep secrets about how nature and nurture forge a uniquely human obsession.

Editorial Reviews

Musician Daniel Levitin worked in the record industry for many years before his curiosity about our response to music led him into the field of neurobiology. In this delightful guide for non-specialists, he draws on his expertise in both areas to explain the complex connection between music and the human brain. Much of the scientific research cited comes from Levitin's own experimental laboratory at McGill University, but this book is no dry clinical study. Enlivened with witty pop musical references and informed with as much affection as knowledge, This Is Your Brain on Music is a joyful valentine to one of our deepest and most emotional human instincts.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Levitin is a deft and patient explainer of the basics for the non-scientist as well as the non-musician.... By tracing music's deep ties to memory, Levitin helps quantify some of music's magic without breaking its spell.

Salon.com

Why human beings make and enjoy music is, in Levitin's telling, a delicious story. (Salon.com)

Kirkus Reviews

A neuroscientist with a rich musical background explains what is being learned through research about music and the mind. Levitin, a former record producer, now director of the Levitin Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University, sees music as a window into the essence of human nature. To bring the uninitiated up to speed, he devotes his opening chapters to answering the question of what music is, covering rhythm, meter, tempo, loudness and harmony, as well as providing basic information about the workings of the human brain. Levitin describes recent studies, some but not all at his own laboratory, that seek answers to questions about the brain mechanisms underlying emotion and memories associated with music. Noting that there is no single music center in the brain, he recounts how listening to music causes a number of brain regions, from the oldest and most primitive to the newest and as far apart as the frontal lobes and the cerebellum at the back of the brain, to be activated in a particular order. Levitin also considers the neurobehavioral basis of musical expertise; the origins of particular musical preferences; and the evolution of music. Taking issue with Steven Pinker's assertion that music is but an evolutionary accident piggybacking on language, Levitin cogently presents arguments for music's primacy in human history. Two appendixes provide additional information on the processing of music in the brain and on musical chords. The author displays an easy familiarity with a wide range of musical genres and the characteristics of numerous musical instruments and performers' voices. He draws his explanatory examples from jazz, rock-'n'-roll,classical music, nursery and folk songs, and musical theater, to name but a few, tossing in references to the Beatles and Beethoven, Joni Mitchell and Bach, Frank Sinatra and Sousa. Levitin makes the science of music readily understandable to the non-scientist and non-musician alike.

From the Publisher

Endlessly stimulating, a marvelous overview, and one which only a deeply musical neuroscientist could give....An important book.”—Oliver Sacks, M.D.

“I loved reading that listening to music coordinates more disparate parts of the brain than almost anything else - and playing music uses even more! Despite illuminating a lot of what goes on, this book doesn't 'spoil' enjoyment—it only deepens the beautiful mystery that is music.”—David Byrne, founder of Talking Heads and author of How Music Works

“Levitin is a deft and patient explainer of the basics for the non-scientist as well as the non-musician....By tracing music's deep ties to memory, Levitin helps quantify some of music's magic without breaking its spell.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review“Why human beings make and enjoy music is, in Levitin's telling, a delicious story.”—Salon.com

“Dr. Levitin is an unusually deft interpreter full of striking scientific trivia.”—The New York Times

“Every musician, at whatever level of skill, should read this book.”—Howie Klein, former president, Sire and Reprise/Warner Brothers Records

“Levitin’s lucid explanation of why music is important to us is essential reading for creative musicians and scholars. I've been waiting for years for a book like this.”—Jon Appleton, composer and professor of Music, Dartmouth College and Stanford University, inventor of the Synclavier synthesizer

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172369261
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/04/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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