Publisher Description
What can music teach us about the brain? What can the brain teach us about music? And what can both teach us about ourselves?  In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin (The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind) explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:  • 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.
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“If you love music or even are interested in dance, how we communicate, how chuildren respond in the womb, and a myriad of related topics, you will likely be fascinated by this book which (to greatly simplify it) attempts to explain how we respond to music, why it is so important to socities for so long, etc. Levitin relates music to language, movement, opioid rushes, and even sex and “mating displays” . Levitin is brilliant–not only in his knowledge (which stretches over a large number of subjects–which he manages to inter-relate) but also in his ability to make some very complicated concepts accessible (by and large) to the average reader. He discusses music in terms of almost every conceivable type of artist–and seems to know the Stones’ stuff as intimately as classical, or Santana. This is a DENSELY packed book–I appreciated it more by reading only a few pages at a time. But it is an absolutely original book, which will open your eyes (and ears) to something so fundamental and critical to our lives (music), but that most of us have never been able to get our arms around, no less put into words. A brilliant work.”
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Stew (4 out of 5 stars)
