Particularize Books In Favor Of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Original Title: | This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession |
ISBN: | 0525949690 (ISBN13: 9780525949695) |
Edition Language: | English |
Daniel J. Levitin
Hardcover | Pages: 314 pages Rating: 3.87 | 50016 Users | 1504 Reviews
Commentary Toward Books This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life—even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last be- coming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature, including:• Are our musical preferences shaped in utero?
• Is there a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music?
• What do PET scans and MRIs reveal about the brain’s response to music?
• Is musical pleasure different from other kinds of pleasure?
This Is Your Brain on Music explores cultures in which singing is considered an essential human function, patients who have a rare disorder that prevents them from making sense of music, and scientists studying why two people may not have the same definition of pitch. At every turn, this provocative work unlocks deep secrets about how nature and nurture forge a uniquely human obsession.

Mention Containing Books This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Title | : | This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession |
Author | : | Daniel J. Levitin |
Book Format | : | Hardcover |
Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 314 pages |
Published | : | August 3rd 2006 by Dutton Adult (first published August 1st 2006) |
Categories | : | Music. Nonfiction. Science. Psychology. Biology. Neuroscience. Art. Brain |
Rating Containing Books This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Ratings: 3.87 From 50016 Users | 1504 ReviewsCritique Containing Books This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
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 have to have some knowledge of chorded instruments and such whereI read this after reading Oliver Sacks book "Musicophilia" and it is a great follow up. Did you know that what goes in the ear exists in the brain ... I mean really exists. If you hear a frequency of 440hz, an 'A' on the piano keyboard, there exists an electrical signal in your brain with a frequency of exactly 440Hz. Did you know that every natural tone rings a series of mathematically related tones called the overtone series. The relative volume of these overtones creates timbre. Timbre is
Two random facts about me:1) I love music2) I love cognitive and neuroscienceSo I was thrilled about this book. And it was indeed pretty good. My main takeaway from it is that our enjoyment of music stems from the setting up and violation of expectations and human's innate instinct to seek out patterns in whatever stimuli that comes our way.I recommend the audiobook version because it provides musical examples of what the author is talking about, so I believe it's much more convenient to

A for effort and ambition and C for execution. He tries to be all things to all people, bouncing too much from folksy to scholarly and from self-referential to didactic perspectives. Levitin has a substantial music background, both in performance and production, and a very productive track record in cognitive neuroscience. Thus, his personal ambition to account for the neural basis of music, music listening pleasure, and musical creativity is compelling to him, and that motivation is infectious
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
A dense, sometimes wandering, very rewarding book about how we experience music. Its as much about our brains as about music, and Levitin is knowledgeable and interesting on both. Exemplary nonfiction.
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