This Is Your Brain on Music

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

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin

Plume/Penguin | First Edition | 2007 | English | ISBN-10: 0452288525 | 322 pages |

There are inquiries that are too huge for science; are there divine beings, for example, or what is affection? Also, perhaps we will never completely figure out experimentally why music does what it does and why we think about it so. Be that as it may, for some reasons, music should be a beneficial subject for investigative enquiry. It is, as Pythagoras knew, a movement unequivocally established in arithmetic, and the physical science of music is genuinely surely known. It is as widespread as dialect; every single human society have a music, showing it does something basic. Furthermore, we are progressively ready to make sense of, with our modern mind imaging contraptions, what brains do when they hear or consider music. The neuroscience of music is the region of ability of Daniel J. Levitin, and he composes of it in _This Is Your Brain on Music:
The Science of a Human Obsession, an intriguing record of current music brain science. Levitin has delivered a book radiantly open to lay perusers, since despite the fact that he is a scholarly (he runs the Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University), before he turned into a researcher, he had been a performing performer, sound designer, and record maker, working with names like Steely Dan and Blue Oyster Cult. He does pull cases from Bach and Beethoven, however he is clearly more open to refering to all around known tunes like "Cheerful Birthday to You", "Some place Over the Rainbow", or "Stairway to Heaven". (Perusers whose tastes run in past ages will potentially be shocked at the advancement cutting edge well known artists have shown.) Levitin has a decent comical inclination and is a friendly explainer.

What can music show us about the cerebrum? What can the cerebrum show us about music? Also, what can both show us about ourselves?

In this notable union of workmanship and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin (The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind) investigates the association between music - its execution, its creation, how we hear it out, why we appreciate it - and the human mind. Drawing on the most recent examination and on musical samples extending from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin uncovers:

How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world. Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre.

That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our head
Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, This Is Your Brain on Music will attract readers of Oliver Sacks and David Byrne, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Think of a song that resonates deep down in your being. Now imagine sitting down with someone who was there when the song was recorded and can tell you how that series of sounds was committed to tape, and who can also explain why that particular combination of rhythms, timbres and pitches has lodged in your memory, making your pulse race and your heart swell every time you hear it. Remarkably, Levitin does all this and more, interrogating the basic nature of hearing and of music making (this is likely the only book whose jacket sports blurbs from both Oliver Sacks and Stevie Wonder), without losing an affectionate appreciation for the songs he's reducing to neural impulses. Levitin is the ideal guide to this material: he enjoyed a successful career as a rock musician and studio producer before turning to cognitive neuroscience, earning a Ph.D. and becoming a top researcher into how our brains interpret music. Though the book starts off a little dryly (the first chapter is a crash course in music theory), Levitin's snappy prose and relaxed style quickly win one over and will leave readers thinking about the contents of their iPods in an entirely new way. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Levitin's fascination with the mystery of music and the study of why it affects us so deeply is at the heart of this book. In a real sense, the author is a rock 'n' roll doctor, and in that guise dissects our relationship with music. He points out that bone flutes are among the oldest of human artifacts to have been found and takes readers on a tour of our bio-history. In this textbook for those who don't like textbooks, he discusses neurobiology, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, empirical philosophy, Gestalt psychology, memory theory, categorization theory, neurochemistry, and exemplar theory in relation to music theory and history in a manner that will draw in teens. A wonderful introduction to the science of one of the arts that make us human.–Will Marston, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.