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

Categories: Science , Staff Picks , Nonfiction

Some scientists have the gift of writing so clearly that it’s like being taken backstage by a magician and shown all the tricks—oh, that’s how it’s done.  I heard Daniel J. Levitin on the Diane Rehm Show a few weeks ago and was impressed by how well he described his new book, This Is Your Brain on Music:  The Science of a Human Obsession, and when I picked up a copy, I was delighted to find that he writes just as lucidly and humorously as he talks.

Levitin is a cognitive neuroscientist (“the field that is the intersection of psychology and neurology”) and musician who studies how and why the human brain makes and appreciates music. 

Levitin’s research at McGill University asks fascinating questions like, why do we find music emotionally moving?  Why do we all have different musical tastes?  Why do we find ourselves driven crazy by a musical phrase that we can’t get out of our head?  (Those are called “ear worms,” by the way.)  What parts of the brain come into play when we listen to or play music?  Why do some people have perfect pitch?  How much of music appreciation is culturally based?  And why can a human being instantly recognize a song transposed to another key, but a computer can’t? 

After explaining the basic elements of music (pitch, rhythm, tempo, contour, timbre, loudness, spatial location, reverberation) as well as concepts like meter, key, melody and harmony with admirable clarity, Levitin goes on to review the current state of research and theory of mind and brain as it may help explain the human obsession with music. 

It’s absolutely fascinating.  And the book will probably send you back to the library shelves for some of the music Levitin discusses so knowledgeably and enticingly.