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

published	August 28th 2007 by Plume Books
binding	Paperback
isbn	0452288525 (isbn13: 9780452288522)
pages	320
description	In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its perfo...more [close] 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. 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 • How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our heads And, taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin argues that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. This Is Your Brain on Music is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature. [close]
date added	05-15-07 edit book

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Bruce rated it:

07/23/08

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: unmusical cognitive scientists

In Daniel Levitin's own words, "This book is about the science of music, from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience…. I'll discuss some of the latest studies I and other researchers in our field have conducted on music, musical meaning, and musical pleasure…. [H]ow can we account for wide differences in musical preference -- why is it that one man's Mozart is another man's Madonna?" (p. 11) After reading these 270 pages, I'm sure I can't tell you. I'm pretty disappointed, but ...more In Daniel Levitin's own words, "This book is about the science of music, from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience…. I'll discuss some of the latest studies I and other researchers in our field have conducted on music, musical meaning, and musical pleasure…. [H]ow can we account for wide differences in musical preference -- why is it that one man's Mozart is another man's Madonna?" (p. 11) After reading these 270 pages, I'm sure I can't tell you. I'm pretty disappointed, but then I had really high expectations for this book which it failed to meet (I should know by now never to read the back-cover hype, let alone the 4 pages of promotional blurbs that preceded the table of contents).

But before confessing my own failings here, let me lay a little blame at the author's feet. Right off the bat, he states, "It's a shame that many people are intimidated by the jargon musicians, music theorists, and cognitive scientists throw around. There is specialized vocabulary in every field of inquiry (try to make sense of a full blood-analysis report from your doctor). But in the case of music, music experts and scientists could do a better job of making their work accessible. That is something I tried to accomplish in this book." (p. 10) Levitin also talks about harboring a preference for identifying how the brain interprets moving air molecules as music and the behavioral/emotional significance/origins of this auditory processing over simply mapping where in the brain music triggers neurons.

To that, I say, ha, ha, and double-ha. We take you live to a typical passage (p. 191), which begins as follows: "We found exactly what we had hoped. Listening to music caused a cascade of brain regions to become activated in a particular order: first, auditory cortex for initial processing of the components of the sound. Then the frontal regions, such as BA44 and BA47, that we had previously identified as being involved in processing musical structure and expectations. Finally, a network of regions -- the mesolimbic system -- involved in arousal, pleasure, and the transmission of opiods and the production fo dopamine, culminating in activation in the nucleus accumbens. And the cerebellum and basal ganglia were active throughout, presumably supporting the processing of rhythm and meter."

If you got that, this book is for you (but not me, alas). Levitin devotes the first 1/5 of this book to defining musical terms (tuning, timbre, scale) he will not really use later. It's interesting, but cognitively irrelevant. There is some fun anecdotal stuff buried in here (did you know that if you chop off the 'attack' of a piano from a recording and just play the body of the pitch, it sounds indistinguishable from a flute? did you know that music appreciation and sociability are closely correlated?), but the questions posed in the introduction are never answered. Is music a by-product of speech, etc. or a seminal human intuition? Ummm… not sure. How and when are music preferences established? Ummm… mostly from exposure during one's teens, but possibly also from that in the womb, early childhood, and later in life. Why? Don't know. Repetition, perhaps?

I give this book 2 stars for the extensive annotated bibliography at the end and (ironically, considering the author's stated subject matter preferences) the trivially-interesting pictographic brain mappings of music function in the appendix. What a bummer.
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Marigold rated it:

01/03/08

Read in October, 2007

This was pretty technical for me - I read it for book group when the theme was "read outside of your comfort zone"! I do love music & participate in it as a singer, but the science end of things is not comfortable for me. I found the book fascinating but I can't say I understood all of what I was reading. So for me it was more like a collection of fun facts that cropped up as I was reading. For instance, I still don't understand what A440 is!
Did you know:
When men and women sp...more This was pretty technical for me - I read it for book group when the theme was "read outside of your comfort zone"! I do love music & participate in it as a singer, but the science end of things is not comfortable for me. I found the book fascinating but I can't say I understood all of what I was reading. So for me it was more like a collection of fun facts that cropped up as I was reading. For instance, I still don't understand what A440 is!
Did you know:
When men and women speak in unison, they generally speak one octave apart, even when they try to speak the exact same pitches?
Research on the development of the first MRI scanners was done by the British company EMI, financed mostly by profits from the sales of Beatles records?
When you get a song stuck in your head, that's called an ear worm?
Timbre is the overall sound of a song/piece of music. People can most reliably identify songs based on their timbre, not their melody or rhythm. For instance, you might hear a ten-second piece by the Beatles & if you didn't know it was the Beatles based on that snippet, you could still say, "that sounds like the Beatles".
Most amateur singers don't memorize every note of a musical piece. They memorize the "most important" notes, & they have a knowledge of the pitch relationships of the others.
It takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of anything, including music. That's about 3 hours a day, or 20 hours a week, for ten years. (I'm not going to reach mastery!)
As adults, the music we tend to be nostalgic for, that feels like "our" music, is the music we hear when we're 10 to 15 years old. We remember songs from our teen years because they are times of great self-discovery & have special "tags" assigned to them in our brains, because most things we learn during those years have special "this is important" tags. Also around 14 years old, our brains achieve neural maturation & develop the preferences for music that are close to adult levels.
My favorite quote: "I can take care of my harmonic self and find my way back to musical reality if I have to!"

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2 comments

Ed rated it:

(review of isbn 0525949690)

05/10/08

bookshelves: music, theory-philosophy-mumbo-jumbo

Read in May, 2008

As I read the introduction to this book I got so excited I actually got chills and felt short of breath a little, and this on a morning that I didn't have to chase my train at the HB.

Levitin outlined a bunch of things he was going to discuss, whats whys and hows regarding our cognition of music. It was all stuff I really wanted to read about. I couldn't wait.

I could imagine after such high hopes that I was sure to be disappointed. But I wasn't. This book is really, really great.

My sist...more As I read the introduction to this book I got so excited I actually got chills and felt short of breath a little, and this on a morning that I didn't have to chase my train at the HB.

Levitin outlined a bunch of things he was going to discuss, whats whys and hows regarding our cognition of music. It was all stuff I really wanted to read about. I couldn't wait.

I could imagine after such high hopes that I was sure to be disappointed. But I wasn't. This book is really, really great.

My sister gave it to Janie and I as a fun way of synthesizing our interests/careers. I'm not sure she herself thought that it was all that great, just something thoughtful and a nice gift for both of us.

At the very least it has led to some neuro-scientific discussion between Janie and I in which I actually contribute! And there are direct correlations between some of the neuro-phenomena Levitin discusses and what Janie is currently researching...I'm dying for her to read this now too and see if it makes as big and impression on her as it did me.

It is definitely written for a lay audience, though...something that was perfect for me in the neuroscience parts but could get tedious in the music parts...I am primarily worried that Janie will find BOTH tedious, but judging from our discussions, Levitin apparently discusses quite a bit of research with which she is not familiar. Maybe it will light a fire under her too! I hope so.

Though it probably wasn't intended this way, "This is Your Brain on Music" has really served as an incredible practice aid for me, helping me concentrate and use my time more efficiently based on what I now know about how my brain probably "stores" musical memories and skills.

There is really something special going on here...I realize it's probably not for everyone so I could tone down my excitement. But it may surprise even the least interested and most skeptical. It's well written and entertaining and FULL of really fascinating, novel information. Give it a shot! ...less

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5 comments

Jessica rated it:

(review of isbn 0525949690)

02/18/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

People often ask me about how I can be a musician and into sign language. It occurs for them like there is a dichotomy at play. I've never experienced my work in either area to be at odds with the other.

This week I'm reading the coolest book I've read in a while: This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin. He was once a musician and sound engineer, but now is a neuroscientist (another set of odd-bedfellow occupations). A Publishers Weekly review says "This is likely the only book ...more

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Deborah rated it:

(review of isbn 0525949690)

07/23/08

Read in July, 2008

This book may not be brain surgery, but it is mind numbing. The discussion on music terminology and theory ranges from remedial to irrelevant. Do people really need to be told how to pronounce 'timbre,' and does the pronunciation of such terms really matter in the context of the book? On the other hand, Levitin would make reference to areas of the brain or concepts in neuroscience with little or no explanation (and you're completely on your own with the pronunciation, by the way).

I will...more

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Bettie rated it:

(review of isbn 0525949690)

07/22/08

bookshelves: non-fiction--science, psychology

Read in July, 2008

In this unprecedented meeting of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscietist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music -- its performances, its compositions, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it -- and the human brain. Drawing on the lastest research Levitin reveals:

- How composers exploit the way our brains make sense of the world
- Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers
- Why 10,000 hours of practice, rather than talent, is the key t...more

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Mike rated it:

04/06/08

bookshelves: at-barnes, notes, own, personal-studies

Read in December, 2007

This is a pretty nice book, and I enjoyed reading it. From the reviews I've seen here, the material seems to have passed over most people's heads (by being too rough, or the phrase you'll come across a few times, "I didn't feel like I walked away exclaiming 'eureka!'"... or the book angered more expert readers by its simplicity, but it wasn't meant to talk of new discoveries as much as it was meant for a general public.

The book takes a while for an average person, and I'd say you ...more

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Ken rated it: (review of isbn 1843547155)

03/24/08

Read in March, 2008

This is one of those books that I think is a valuable read but not necessarily an enjoyable one..at least for the general reader. If you bring a background in neuroscience then this is a treasure chest of information. My personal interest lies in music specifically and I saw this as an opportunity to better understand how our brains engage with music. Coupled with Oliver Sacks collection "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" we begin to unlock the mysterious properties of music to h...more

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Ginny rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

03/21/08

Read in March, 2008
recommended to Ginny by: book cover
recommends it for: students, music, medicine

Very technical information, the science was difficult for me at times, but the book was fascinating. I learned so much about the brain and music. Most interesting to me was the description of changes in the brain that come with aging. My mother, age 88, insists that her electronic piano is out of tune in the highest octave, but according to this author the tiny hairs in the inner ear stiffen with aging and distort hearing. It's not the piano, it's what she's hearing that is distorted. I als...more

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Matthew rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

09/17/07

There's a lot of amazing stuff in this book to contemplate, but the author tries too hard to make it relevant for readers who listen to the Eagles and Mariah Carey (musicians he specifically sites), and he gets caught up in the most mundane details of his personal interactions with his colleagues at meetings and dinners and such, and who ordered what, and how everybody was dressed, and where everybody got their degrees.

My girlfriend got me interested in it because I found her passionate expl...more

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Jessica rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

07/11/08

Read in July, 2008

Loved the book--I found so many things that were fascinating and I kept reading them aloud to the annoyance of everyone around me. It has definitely changed the way I listen to music and how I think about it and it really makes me impressed with the people who write it. It also makes me so glad I chose to include exposure to music (both formal and informal) in my kids' lives starting in infancy.
It's VERY hard reading--the bulleted list of topics on the back cover make it seem like a much mor...more

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Stew rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

03/23/08

Read in February, 2008

If you love music or even are interested in dance, how we communicate, how chuildren respond in the womb, and a myriad of related topics, you will likely be fascinated by this book which (to greatly simplify it) attempts to explain how we respond to music, why it is so important to socities for so long, etc. Levitin relates music to language, movement, opioid rushes, and even sex and "mating displays" . Levitin is brilliant--not only in his knowledge (which stretches over a large num...more

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Sam rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

03/24/08

bookshelves: music

Read in February, 2008

Seemingly for musicians or composers this book is more fitting a read for scientists and doctors. Not much content is musicianship related. Middle third is a bore.

What I learned:
- There is no sound in space
(there are no molecules to vibrate)
- Virtuosity comes from hours of practice
(talent and absolute pitch play a small role)
- Learning to play an instrument after 20 is hard
(the brain is done developing)
- Percussion is a primitive musical trait
(affirming my suspician drumm...more

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Pam rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

02/23/08

Read in March, 2008
recommends it for: Scientists?

I really despise myself for giving what should be an awesome book only 2 stars. I know I am mentally feeble, but was this ever dry!!! Interesting topic - neuroscience & music - but the author did go on at times (too much music theory, god I hated studying that and I'm a musician) and took the scientific aspects to a degree where I often found myself stopping to ponder "what the hell is he talking about?" It read like it could be someone's dissertation. The second half is slightly m...more

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Justin rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

01/06/08

bookshelves: about-music

Read in February, 2007

This Is Your Bain On Music is an extroardinary, fascinating book about people, music and why people like music. Author Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist and has been a professional musician and recording engineer. Combined with his excellent writing, that makes him the one person who could have written this book. Levitin defines music, explains the mechanics of the brain then examines how the two work together, simultaneously blowing your mind. He explains scientific and music theory...more

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Steven rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

01/28/08

bookshelves: music, science

Read in January, 2008

We get an account of the creation and enjoyment of music from a neuroscience point of view in Levitin's book. I liked that he alternates between that of a musician discussing his craft, to a neuroscientist presenting the latest research from his colleagues and him, and to someone who finds his career amazing and exciting. Anyone who has an educational background in music may find the music theory explanations many sections of the book to be repetitive and old news, but for someone like me, who...more

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Steve rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

03/01/08

Read in February, 2008
recommends it for: those interested in the elements of music, how the brain works, or those learning music

At times, a fascinating book. I love music, so it was interesting to understand how the brain receives and interprets the elements of music (pitch, rhythm, tempo, contour, loudness, harmony, key, and melody). It is amazingly complicated, yet we do it effortlessly while listening. One of the greatest lessons for me in the book was that it is only recently in our history, and particularly in Western culture, that we have segregated the appreciation of music into few "expert" performers...more

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James rated it: (review of isbn 0525949690)

06/11/08

The book's author, a somewhat enigmatic combination of a neurologist and recording engineer, examines various aspects of musical experience and cognition in a well-rounded, accessible manner. He explains why songs get stuck in one's head, examines the quality of "catchiness," and discusses an after-dinner conversation with Francis Crick about the role of the cerebellum in musical perception. His style is accessible and manages to treat the neuro-scientific explanations with a reasonabl...more

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Michael rated it:

02/14/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in February, 2008

If I wanted to get a lesson in music theory, I would have researched various possiblities of taking a class. This book is not a casual read. The first half or so is all music theory, and if you have none, you will not enjoy it. I was not in the mood. Eventually, the book turns around an starts to get interesting, more to the topic. But even then, the author strays off into other topics. This is a book about neuroscience. Music seemed like an afterthought most of the time. Here's 20 pages of scie...more

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Mattie rated it:

07/03/08

Read in July, 2008

Really cool book on the the brain's relationship with and to music. Although written for a general audience, Levitan doesn't significantly dumb down or shy away from the neuroscience at the very heart of the book. At the same time, Levitan let's a very wry, witty sense of humor season his writing. Finally, he's got both the musical and scientific chops to understand the subject matter from both sides. This means there's enough science and detail to impart some pretty technical information, bu...more

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avg rating (this edition): 3.48 (128 ratings)
number of reviews: 220

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other editions

[close] This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (Hardcover)
isbn: 0525949690

[close] This Is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession (Paperback)
isbn: 1843547163

[close] This Is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession (Hardcover)
isbn: 1843547155

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