In today’s Sunday NYT: a very interesting portrait of neuroscientist Daniel Levitin (one of several neuroscientists with a real musical background) on his theory of how our brains are wired to enjoy music. Some of it is a bit far fetched, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.
Money quote:
This summer he published “This Is Your Brain on Music” (Dutton), a layperson’s guide to the emerging neuroscience of music. Dr. Levitin is an unusually deft interpreter, full of striking scientific trivia. For example we learn that babies begin life with synesthesia, the trippy confusion that makes people experience sounds as smells or tastes as colors. Or that the cerebellum, a part of the brain that helps govern movement, is also wired to the ears and produces some of our emotional responses to music. His experiments have even suggested that watching a musician perform affects brain chemistry differently from listening to a recording.
This is the last blogpost here for 2006. Happy New Year to all of my readers and we’ll look forward to a productive 2007.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 