This is Your Brain on Music cover art

This is Your Brain on Music

Understanding a Human Obsession

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This is Your Brain on Music

By: Daniel Levitin
Narrated by: Daniel Levitin
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About this listen

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

 Instruction & Technique Mental Health Awareness Music Human Brain Emotions

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Critic 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.
Consistently interesting... Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development
Endlessly stimulating (Oliver Sacks)
Music seems to have an almost willful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know... Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox (Sting)
You'll never hear music in the same way again
All stars
Most relevant
My boss recommended this for years ( the book) and I only managed to start reading it before I left the company. So when I saw the audio book on here I thought that’s a write and easy way. I don’t know quite what I was expecting but maybe I thought it would unlock something magical in my brain or understand music theory better. I still really enjoy Daniel and support him. Thanks

Ok but not as much musical content as II thought

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I absorbed all the interesting outcomes of research that has been done on how music affects the brain.

Inspiring book with lots of interesting references

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I’ve listened to this while working on an MA in Music Performance. It has expanded, illustrated, and illuminated the topics that I’m focused on. Thank you!

This makes my brain happy!

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Enjoyed this book very much however it contains some outdated notions about autism. Many autistic people experience music on an emotional level.

Really interesting perspective on music and neuroscience

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I loved the chapters in emotion and the cerebellum. very informative and fun. Great examples of tunes.

Brilliantly insightful

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