Table of Contents

This Is Your Brain On MusicIntroduction
I Love Music and I Love Science—Why Would I Want to Mix the Two?

1. What Is Music?
From Pitch to Timbre

2. Foot Tapping
Discerning Rhythm, Loudness, and Harmony

3. Behind the Curtain
Music and the Mind Machine

4. Anticipation
What We Expect from Liszt (and Ludacris)

5. You Know My Name, Look Up the Number
How We Categorize Music

6. After Dessert, Crick Was Still Four Seats Away from Me
Music, Emotion, and the Reptilian Brain

7. What Makes a Musician?
Expertise Dissected

8. My Favorite Things
Why Do We Like the Music We Like?

9. The Music Instinct
Evolution's #1 Hit

Appendices
Bibliographic Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

About the Author

Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, is a neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist, and bestselling author. He is Founding Dean of Arts & Humanities at the Minerva Schools at KGI in San Francisco, and Professor Emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University. He is the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs, The Organized Mind, A Field Guide to Lies, and Successful Aging. He divides his time between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reviews

“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 

In this exploration of the brain-music relationship, musician and neuroscientist Levitin, who heads the Levitin Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University, begins by defining and explaining musical terms. Lay readers can take these chapters as reference material; musicians and scientists will grasp the apparatus of organized sound, hearing, and brain function, structured in detail with examples ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to the Beatles. Following that material is an explanation of how music arouses and plays with expectations, creates tension and resolution, and provides insights into brain structure and function. Levitin concludes with three delightful chapters: "What Makes a Musician?" (10,000 hours of practice), "My Favorite Things" (why we like what we like), and "The Music Instinct," in which he argues-against experimental psychologist Steven Pinker-that music plays a role in evolution (singers and dancers are perceived as being more attractive as mates). In Levitin's study, current brain research becomes comprehensible through music-a wonderful accomplishment. Along with Anthony Storr's Music and the Mind and Kathleen Marie Higgins's The Music of Our Lives, this book extends the appreciation of music as neural training. Essential for most libraries.-E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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 2006 Reed Business Information.

"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