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

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Description

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain.

Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary twist of fate, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, in all probability even more so than language. Drawing on the contemporary research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, he reveals:

• How composers produce probably the most most pleasurable effects of being attentive 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 used to be Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, relatively than talent, is the motive force in the back of musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (referred to as earworms) get stuck in our head

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.
In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain.

Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary twist of fate, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, in all probability even more so than language. Drawing on the contemporary research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, he reveals:

• How composers produce probably the most most pleasurable effects of being attentive 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 used to be Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, relatively than talent, is the motive force in the back of musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (referred to as earworms) get stuck in our head

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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