This Is Your Brain On Music is a popular science

Popular science

Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...

 book written by the McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 neuroscientist

Neuroscientist

A neuroscientist is an individual who studies the scientific field of neuroscience or any of its related sub-fields...

 Daniel J. Levitin, and first published by Dutton Books (a division of Penguin Publishing) in the U.S. and Canada in 2006, and updated and released in paperback by Plume/Penguin in 2007. It has been translated into 18 languages and spent more than a year on The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

, and other bestseller lists.

The aim of This Is Your Brain On Music was to make recent findings in the neuroscience of music accessible to the educated layperson. Characteristics and theoretical parameters of music are explained alongside scientific findings about how the brain interprets and processes these characteristics. The neuroanatomy of musical expectation, emotion, listening and performance is discussed.

This Is Your Brain On Music describes the components of music, such as timbre, rhythm, pitch, and harmony and ties them to neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, cognitive psychology, and evolution, while also making these topics accessible to nonexpert readers by avoiding the use of scientific jargon. One particular focus of the book is on cognitive models of categorization and expectation, and how music exploits these cognitive processes. The book challenges Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...

's "auditory cheesecake" assertion that music was an incidental by-product of evolution, arguing instead that music served as an indicator of cognitive, emotional and physical health, and was evolutionarily advantageous as a force that led to social bonding and increased fitness, citing the arguments of Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

, Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller (evolutionary psychologist)

Geoffrey F. Miller , Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico, is an American evolutionary psychologist.Miller is a 1987 graduate of Columbia University, where he earned a B.A. in biology and psychology. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology from Stanford University...

 and others.

This Is Your Brain On Music was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

 Book Award in 2006-2007 for best in the Science and Engineering category, and a Quill Award for best debut author of 2006-2007. It was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

, The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

and The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

. A long list of prominent scientists and musicians have praised it, including Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...

, Francis Crick

Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...

, Brian Greene

Brian Greene

Brian Greene is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds...

, David Byrne

David Byrne

David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...

, George Martin

George Martin

Sir George Henry Martin CBE is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"— a title that he often describes as "nonsense," but the fact remains that he served as producer on all but one of The Beatles' original albums...

, Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono

is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

, Neil Peart

Neil Peart

Neil Ellwood Peart , OC, is a Canadian musician and author. He is the drummer for the rock band Rush.Peart grew up in Port Dalhousie, Ontario . During adolescence, he floated from regional band to regional band in pursuit of a career as a full-time drummer...

, Victor Wooten

Victor Wooten

Victor Lemonte Wooten is an American bass player, composer, author, and producer, and has been the recipient of five Grammy Awards....

, Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend

Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career...

 and Keith Lockhart

Keith Lockhart

For the baseball player, see Keith Lockhart Keith Lockhart , to Newton Frederick and Marilyn Jean Woodyard Lockhart, is an American orchestral conductor....

, and it has been adopted for course use in both science and literature classes at dozens of universities including MIT, Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Kenyon College

Kenyon College

Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...

 and the University of Wisconsin. Two documentary films were based on the book: The Musical Brain (2009) featuring Levitin as host, along with appearances by Sting, Michael Bublé

Michael Bublé

Michael Steven Bublé is a Canadian singer. He has won several awards, including three Grammy Awards and multiple Juno Awards. His first album reached the top ten in Canada and the UK. He found worldwide commercial success with his 2005 album It's Time, and his 2007 album Call Me Irresponsible was...

, Feist, and former Fugees leader Wyclef Jean

Wyclef Jean

Wyclef Jean is a Haitian musician, record producer, and politician. At age nine, Jean moved to the United States with his family and has spent much of his life in the country...

; and The Music Instinct (2009) with Levitin and Bobby McFerrin

Bobby McFerrin

Robert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. is an American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner.-Life:...

 as co-hosts, with appearances by Yo Yo Ma, Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus Cocker has led a successful solo career...

, Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....

, Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...

 and others. In 2009, Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

announced This Is Your Brain On Music would be required reading in its Freshman Core Program in General Education.

English

• This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. New York: Plume (Penguin), 2007, paperback, ISBN 978-0452288522.
• This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession. London: Grove/Atlantic, 2007, hardcover, ISBN 978-1843547150
• This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession. London: Grove/Atlantic, 2008, paperback, ISBN 978-1843547167

Other languages

• De la note au cerveau. Les Éditions de l'Homme/Sogides, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2010, ISBN 978-2761926799
• De la note au cerveau. France: Editions Heloise D'Ormesson, 2010. ISBN 2350871290
• Der Musik-Instinkt: Die Wissenschaft einer menschlichen Leidenschaft. Heidelberg, Germany: Spektrum, 2009, ISBN 9783827420787
• Fatti di musica: La scienza di un'ossessione umana. 2008, Torino, Italy: Codice, 2008, paperback, ISBN 978-8875780982
• Musiikki ja aivot: Ihmisen erään pakkomielteen tiedettä. (Translated into Finnish by Timo Paukku.) Helsinki: Terra Cognita 2010. ISBN 978-952-5697-22-3
• This Is Your Brain On Music. (Portuguese). Brazil: Distribuidora Record, 2009.
• This Is Your Brain On Music. Croatia: Vukovic & Runjic.
• This Is Your Brain On Music. Greece: Psihopolis, due 2010.
• This Is Your Brain On Music. Japan: Hakuyosha Publishing, due 2010.
• This Is Your Brain on Music. Romania: SC Humanitas, due 2010.
• This Is Your Brain On Music. Turkey: Pegasus Yayincilik, 2010.
• Tu cerebro y la musica. Spain: RBA Libros. ISBN 978-8498673364, 2008.
• Uma Paixão Humana: O seu Cérebro e a Música. Lisbon, Portugal: EditorialBizâncio, 2007, paperback, ISBN 978-9725303634
• 이 음악에 대한 당신의 두뇌 (This Is Your Brain On Music.) Korea: Mati. ISBN 978-8992053167, 2008.
• Ова е вашиотмозок за музика (This Is Your Brain On Music.) Macedonia: Kosta Abras Ad Ohrid, 2009. ISBN 978-9989843488