This Is Your Brain on Music

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

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.

Levitin is a deft and patient explainer of the basics for the non-scientist as well as the non-musician. . . . By tracing musicAEs deep ties to memory, Levitin helps quantify some of musicAEs magic without breaking its spell. ("Los Angeles Times Book Review")Endlessly stimulating, a marvelous overview, and one which only a deeply musical neuroscientist could give. . . . An important book. (Oliver Sacks, M.D.)LevitinAEs 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. ("Publishers Weekly", starred review)Why human beings make and enjoy music is, in LevitinAEs telling, a delicious story. (Salon.com)

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