I just finished reading This is your Brain on Music, a book by Daniel Levitin that looks deeply into how our brain processes music and why music is such an important part of our lives.
The author has a perfect background for writing such a book; he was a record producer who became a neuropsychologist. Because of this, he is able to gather and piece together clues from a wide variety of sources.
The writing is clear, well organized, and includes many interesting fascinating tidbits. For example:
- The left-hemisphere regions that are active in tracking musical structure are the same ones that deaf people use when communicating by sign language.
- At an early age, babies are thought to be synethestic and experience the world as a sort of psychedelic union of everything sensory; the number five is red, cheese tastes like D-flat, and roses smell like triangles.
- The saxaphone part in the Beatle's Lady Madonna is actually the four Beatles singing into their cupped hands.
He ends the book with a discussion of how music might play an evolutionary role. For example, it's possible that a display of original musical talent indicates intelligence which in turn attracts a mate. And on a related note, he mentions that human females are actually attracted more to creativity than to wealth since creative types are more likely to furnish better genes.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in music.
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