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This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Daniel J. Levitin
How does a pattern of vibrating air become something the brain experiences as joy, memory, or obsession? This Is Your Brain on Music sets out to answer that, guiding non-specialists through pitch, rhythm, timbre, emotion, and the neural machinery that makes music feel essential. Daniel Levitin is well placed to tell the story: he worked as a record producer and session musician before becoming a psychologist and running a music-cognition lab at McGill University, and he threads laboratory science through anecdotes from his years in the studio. First published by Dutton in 2006, the book became a genuine crossover hit, selling over a million copies and helping popularize the young field of music cognition. It speaks to curious music lovers who want to understand why a song can raise the hair on their arms, and who don't mind a bestseller's brisk, story-driven approach to the science.
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The author
Daniel J. Levitin (b. 1957) worked as a record producer and session musician before earning a PhD in psychology and directing a laboratory for music cognition at McGill University. That double career, studio and lab, shapes the book's blend of anecdote and experiment.
The book
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (Dutton, 2006) is a popular tour of how the brain perceives and responds to music, covering pitch, rhythm, timbre, memory, emotion, and why particular songs seize us. Levitin interlaces neuroscience with stories from his years in the music business, aiming to explain a near-universal human obsession to general readers.
How it has aged
A genuine crossover success, it sold more than a million copies, was translated into many languages, and did much to popularize music cognition. Reviewers admired its accessibility while noting that some anecdotes run long and self-referential, and that a few mid-2000s neuroscientific claims, mirror neurons among them, are now considerably more contested than the confident prose implies. As an introduction it still works well; treat its frontier science as a snapshot of its moment rather than settled fact.
For more context
Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia makes a fine companion, as does Levitin's own The World in Six Songs.
Sources - This Is Your Brain on Music (Wikipedia) - Daniel Levitin (Wikipedia)
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Daniel J. Levitin
- Publisher
- Dutton
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 2006
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Science
- Location
- Colorado