This is Your Brain on Music - The Science of a Human Obsession

Music, Science, and the Brain are more closely related than you think. Daniel J. Levitin, James McGill Professor of Psychology and Music at McGill University, shows you why this is. In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Levitin 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; and 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. This study will attract readers of Oliver Sacks, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.