Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain On Music" is a stimulating look into the way the brain processes music, from the anatomical structures that play a role in hearing and identifying music to the emotional responses that music stirs. When I ran across this book, I was really excited to read it because it combines two of my favorite subjects: music and neuroscience. What could be better? This book definitely did not disappoint.
The first two chapters address the basic aspects of music, such as pitch, rhythm, tempo, contour, timbre, loudness, meter, key, melody, and harmony. As a musician, this chapter didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and I feel that readers who are musicians can skim this chapter. The second chapter is a more in-depth look at rhythm, tempo, and meter, detailing how some beats are louder or more important than others and how notes are grouped rhythmically. The third chapter talks about the complexity of neural connections and circuits in the brain and how certain areas of the brain contribute to music processing. The fourth chapter discusses how our brains have musical expectations. When listening to certain chords in a musical work, we have an idea of what should come next. Composers who violate these expectations in just the right ways can create suspense and interest. The next couple of chapters talk about how we categorize music and how music creates an emotional experience for its listeners. Chapter seven addresses musical expertise and why some people go on to become expert musicians and others do not. Chapter eight discusses the reasoning behind our musical preferences and why we like the music we do. The book wraps up with an examination of the evolutionary basis and significance of music.
Music, Emotion, and...the Cerebellum?
One part of the book that I found to be really interesting was the discussion of music's remarkable ability to evoke an emotional response. Levitin explains that the cerebellum plays a crucial role in one of music's central aspects: timing. Our cerebellum helps us track the beat when listening to a piece of music. However, the cerebellum's work is not limited to musical timekeeping alone. Levitin's studies showed the cerebellum's involvement when people were asked to listen to music they like versus music they didn't like, or music that was familiar to them versus unfamiliar music. Initially, Levitin thought these results were generated by errors. However, after learning of the work of Harvard professor Jeremy Schmahmann, which showed that the cerebellum is involved in emotion and contains numerous connections to the brain's emotional centers, Levitin became extremely interested in pursuing the issue further.
Using a technique called functional and effective connectivity analysis, Levitin's laboratory was able to provide evidence showing that the rewarding aspects of music listening are partly mediated by the cerebellum's contribution to regulating emotion through its connections to the frontal lobe and the limbic system. "The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving...regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes...When we love a piece of music, it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times in our lives." It is truly amazing to see that a part of the brain that was thought to perform only one major function in music processing actually performs another extremely important function, perhaps the most intriguing function in the brain's processing of music: the generation of an emotional response to music. The fact that music has the ability to evoke an array of emotions in its listeners is what makes music so special to me. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the neurological basis for the emotions that music is so apt to conjure forth.
Music Preferences: Why We Enjoy the Music We Do
Why is it that I love The Eagles, but don't particularly enjoy listening to Johnny Cash? Why is it that my best friend can't get enough of country music, but hates alternative rock? These are the types of questions that I have often wondered about, and Levitin attempts to answer them in his book. One of the main questions I've been curious about is how and when music preferences are formed. For instance, if an expectant mother listens to classical music a majority of the time that she is pregnant, will her baby develop a strong preference for Mozart and Beethoven? It turns out that musical preferences are influenced, but not determined, by what we hear in the womb. Therefore, the baby referred to in the previous example may develop a liking for Mozart and Beethoven, but it may not.
Levitin goes on to talk about how researchers point to the teen years as the turning point of musical preferences. "Part of the reason we remember songs from our teenage years is because those years were times of self-discovery, and...were emotionally charged; in general, we tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to 'tag' the memories as something important." Levitin also addresses other factors that influence our music preferences, such as our personality characteristics, the degree of complexity of the music, and our past experiences (whether positive or negative) with certain types of music. Although I probably could have thought of these factors that influence music preferences on my own, the book provides an explanation as to why and how these factors influence our musical tastes, which I found to be extremely enlightening.
Why You Should Read This Book
As a music lover who happens to also be interested in neuroscience, "This Is Your Brain On Music" was a fabulous read. However, with Levitin's easily accessible writing style and references to well-known artists and songs, I feel that this book offers valuable and interesting insights that even someone who isn't obsessed with music and neuroscience can enjoy and comprehend.
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Top reviews from other countries
Nos-tromo
Great introduction to the neuroscience of music
Reviewed in Germany on February 11, 2021