The Organized Mind: The Science of Preventing Overload, Increasing Productivity and Restoring Your Focus

by Daniel J. Levitin

Neural communication is very rapid—it has to be—reaching speeds of over 300 miles per hour, and with neurons communicating with one another hundreds of times per second. The voltage output of a single resting neuron is 70 millivolts, about the same as the line output of an iPod. If you could hook up a neuron to a pair of earbuds, you could actually hear its rhythmic output as a series of clicks. My colleague Petr Janata did this many years ago with neurons in the owl’s brain. He attached small thin wires to neurons in the owl’s brain and connected the other end of the wires to an amplifier and a loudspeaker. Playing music to the owl, Petr could hear in the neural firing pattern the same pattern of beats and pitches that were in the original music.