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

Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain On Music" is a stimulating look into the way the brain processes music, from the anatomical structures that play a role in hearing and identifying music to the emotional responses that music stirs. When I ran across this book, I was really excited to read it because it combines two of my favorite subjects: music and neuroscience. What could be better? This book definitely did not disappoint. The first two chapters address the basic aspects of music, such as pitch, rhythm, tempo, contour, timbre, loudness, meter, key, melody, and harmony. As a musician, this chapter didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and I feel that readers who are musicians can skim this chapter. The second chapter is a more in-depth look at rhythm, tempo, and meter, detailing how some beats are louder or more important than others and how notes are grouped rhythmically. The third chapter talks about the complexity of neural connections and circuits in the brain and how certain areas of the brain contribute to music processing. The fourth chapter discusses how our brains have musical expectations. When listening to certain chords in a musical work, we have an idea of what should come next. Composers who violate these expectations in just the right ways can create suspense and interest. The next couple of chapters talk about how we categorize music and how music creates an emotional experience for its listeners. Chapter seven addresses musical expertise and why some people go on to become expert musicians and others do not. Chapter eight discusses the reasoning behind our musical preferences and why we like the music we do. The book wraps up with an examination of the evolutionary basis and significance of music. Music, Emotion, and...the Cerebellum? One part of the book that I found to be really interesting was the discussion of music's remarkable ability to evoke an emotional response. Levitin explains that the cerebellum plays a crucial role in one of music's central aspects: timing. Our cerebellum helps us track the beat when listening to a piece of music. However, the cerebellum's work is not limited to musical timekeeping alone. Levitin's studies showed the cerebellum's involvement when people were asked to listen to music they like versus music they didn't like, or music that was familiar to them versus unfamiliar music. Initially, Levitin thought these results were generated by errors. However, after learning of the work of Harvard professor Jeremy Schmahmann, which showed that the cerebellum is involved in emotion and contains numerous connections to the brain's emotional centers, Levitin became extremely interested in pursuing the issue further. Using a technique called functional and effective connectivity analysis, Levitin's laboratory was able to provide evidence showing that the rewarding aspects of music listening are partly mediated by the cerebellum's contribution to regulating emotion through its connections to the frontal lobe and the limbic system. "The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving...regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes...When we love a piece of music, it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times in our lives." It is truly amazing to see that a part of the brain that was thought to perform only one major function in music processing actually performs another extremely important function, perhaps the most intriguing function in the brain's processing of music: the generation of an emotional response to music. The fact that music has the ability to evoke an array of emotions in its listeners is what makes music so special to me. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the neurological basis for the emotions that music is so apt to conjure forth. Music Preferences: Why We Enjoy the Music We Do Why is it that I love The Eagles, but don't particularly enjoy listening to Johnny Cash? Why is it that my best friend can't get enough of country music, but hates alternative rock? These are the types of questions that I have often wondered about, and Levitin attempts to answer them in his book. One of the main questions I've been curious about is how and when music preferences are formed. For instance, if an expectant mother listens to classical music a majority of the time that she is pregnant, will her baby develop a strong preference for Mozart and Beethoven? It turns out that musical preferences are influenced, but not determined, by what we hear in the womb. Therefore, the baby referred to in the previous example may develop a liking for Mozart and Beethoven, but it may not. Levitin goes on to talk about how researchers point to the teen years as the turning point of musical preferences. "Part of the reason we remember songs from our teenage years is because those years were times of self-discovery, and...were emotionally charged; in general, we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to 'tag' the memories as something important." Levitin also addresses other factors that influence our music preferences, such as our personality characteristics, the degree of complexity of the music, and our past experiences (whether positive or negative) with certain types of music. Although I probably could have thought of these factors that influence music preferences on my own, the book provides an explanation as to why and how these factors influence our musical tastes, which I found to be extremely enlightening. Why You Should Read This Book As a music lover who happens to also be interested in neuroscience, "This Is Your Brain On Music" was a fabulous read. However, with Levitin's easily accessible writing style and references to well-known artists and songs, I feel that this book offers valuable and interesting insights that even someone who isn't obsessed with music and neuroscience can enjoy and comprehend.

For those of you trying to understand brain injuries there is a fascinating book which I think is a must read, especially if you happen to have a situation with any hearing issues or auditory centers processing problems. Even if you just love music it is a great read. I think the concepts would help explain any brain injury case to a jury. The book explains the complexity of the neural connections and the systems involved in our perception and understanding of musical sounds which really are nothing but air molecules vibrating on our ear drum which is trasmitted as a signal by the auditory nerves. The incredible brain takes it from there and makes sense of the rhythms, the notes, the tones, etc. There is no sound in the forest when a tree falls unless someone is there to hear it. Almost every part of the brain is involved in auditory processing and the book explains this very well and in a way that could be used to explain this marvelous system to jury. The author asks a lot of interesting questions; why do we like some songs and not others?, why do we sometimes get a song in our head that we can't stop humming?, why do songs affect our emotions so easily? He makes a clear distinction between the mind (thoughts, feelings, emotions, sense of me) from the organic brain itself (axons, neurons, lobes, fluid, blood vessels, arteries) and explains how neuroscientists use imaging studies to map these different areas. So while we make great efforts in court to prove that the brain is damaged by trauma, it is really the mind of the victim that is affected in its functioning. Pain fibers, music fibers, thought fibers are all interconnected. So a pain sensing neuron may be directly connected to a neuron that processes emotions. So, damage to either is damage to the entire link. This can help explain why pain can change the emotions of a person and cause anxiety and depression organically. The author is Daniel J. Levitin who is both a rock and roller and a cognitive neuroscientist. He even uses the phrase "reptilian" brain in explaining how music affects our primitive selves. He explains why in some cultures musical sounds mean different things to a person than they may mean to a person from another culture. He gives a very good description of how the brain processes information from the bottom (brain stem - reptilian) to the top (frontal lobe) and from the top down in a continuing processes that making sense of and adds the meaning to our sensory inputs, and sometimes makes mistakes while doing so. I am only half way through this read, hope I get to bed by midnight. Jim Law Offices of James Parziale, APC Established 1972 James Parziale, JD. Trial Lawyers College 2001 2140-4th Ave. San Diego, Calif. 619-231-2700 [...]

Besteld als kerstcadeau voor mijn zoon, snel geleverd en gelukkig voorradig. Helaas blijkt er een scheurtje in de kaft te zitten. Ik laat het aan mijn zoon of hij wil dat ik hem retour stuur. Wel jammer dat het boek niet extra verpakt is voordat het in de envelop gedaan is. Dat had misschien het scheuren kunnen voorkomen, het lijkt erop dat deze bij het verpakken is blijven hangen.

Un libro muy claro y didáctico, al mismo tiempo que profundo y científico sobre lo que la música le hace a nuestro cerebro y por qué ésta es tan importante en la vida y evolución del hombre.

A comprehensive explanation.

Bought for a gift for a music student , was well received

This is one of my all time favorite books. As a musician, it was a fascinating, informative and educational read. I'd recommend this to anyone who plays music from the absolute beginner to the professional. As well, the layperson will gain an enormous insight into how your brain processes music as you listen to it. I bought this a while ago, and have read it twice. And I'll likely read it again!!!