This is Your Brain on Music

This is Your Brain on Music

Understanding a Human Obsession

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience.

Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand it, and its role in human life

© Daniel Levitin 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Reviews

  • Fluent and readable... [Levitin] rightly insists that we are all better equipped to perform and appreciate music than we think... We are, he says, hard-wired for music.
    Observer

About the author

Daniel Levitin

Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, is a neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist, and bestselling author. He trained at Stanford University Medical School, The University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Oregon. He is founding dean of Arts and Humanities at the Minerva Schools at KGI in San Francisco and Professor Emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University. He is the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs, The Organized Mind, and A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics. He divides his time between Montreal and California.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more