Every Brain Needs Music

Every Brain Needs Music PDF

Author: Lawrence Sherman

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2023-05-16

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0231557795

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Whenever a person engages with music—when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor—countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument requires all of the resources of the nervous system, including cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. Composition and improvisation are remarkable demonstrations of the brain’s capacity for creativity. Something as seemingly simple as listening to a tune involves mental faculties most of us don’t even realize we have. Larry S. Sherman, a neuroscientist and lifelong musician, and Dennis Plies, a professional musician and teacher, collaborate to show how our brains and music work in harmony. They consider music in all the ways we encounter it—teaching, learning, practicing, listening, composing, improvising, and performing—in terms of neuroscience as well as music pedagogy, showing how the brain functions and even changes in the process. Every Brain Needs Music draws on leading behavioral, cellular, and molecular neuroscience research as well as surveys of more than a hundred musical people. It provides new perspectives on learning to play, teaching, how to practice and perform, the ways we react to music, and why the brain benefits from musical experiences. Written for both musical and nonmusical people, including newcomers to brain science, this book is a lively and easy-to-read exploration of the neuroscience of music and its significance in our lives.

Music, Language, and the Brain

Music, Language, and the Brain PDF

Author: Aniruddh D. Patel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 019989017X

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In the first comprehensive study of the relationship between music and language from the standpoint of cognitive neuroscience, Aniruddh D. Patel challenges the widespread belief that music and language are processed independently. Since Plato's time, the relationship between music and language has attracted interest and debate from a wide range of thinkers. Recently, scientific research on this topic has been growing rapidly, as scholars from diverse disciplines, including linguistics, cognitive science, music cognition, and neuroscience are drawn to the music-language interface as one way to explore the extent to which different mental abilities are processed by separate brain mechanisms. Accordingly, the relevant data and theories have been spread across a range of disciplines. This volume provides the first synthesis, arguing that music and language share deep and critical connections, and that comparative research provides a powerful way to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these uniquely human abilities. Winner of the 2008 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.

MUSIC AND THE MIND

MUSIC AND THE MIND PDF

Author: Anthony Storr

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1501122096

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Why does music have such a powerful effect on our minds and bodies? It is the most mysterious and most tangible of all forms of art. Yet, Anthony Storr believes, music today is a deeply significant experience for a greater number of people than ever before. In this book, he explores why this should be so. Drawing on a wide variety of opinions, Storr argues that the patterns of music make sense of our inner experience, giving both structure and coherence to our feelings and emotions. It is because music possesses this capacity to restore our sense of personal wholeness in a culture which requires us to separate rational thought from feelings that many people find it so life-enhancing that it justifies existence.

Your Brain on Music

Your Brain on Music PDF

Author: Laura Saunders

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-08-05

Total Pages: 62

ISBN-13: 9781974313280

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Music education has been scientifically proven to have cognitive benefits; these benefits include: greater attention span, increased ability in geometrical skills, improved performance in mathematical problem solving and spatial tasks, heightened fluency in reading, and greater short-term and long-term memory. These benefits give music educators a platform from which to advocate for the retention and growth of their programs and to encourage music as a lifelong pursuit.

Rhythm, Music, and the Brain

Rhythm, Music, and the Brain PDF

Author: Michael Thaut

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1136762876

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With the advent of modern cognitive neuroscience and new tools of studying the human brain "live," music as a highly complex, temporally ordered and rule-based sensory language quickly became a fascinating topic of study. The question of "how" music moves us, stimulates our thoughts, feelings, and kinesthetic sense, and how it can reach the human experience in profound ways is now measured with the advent of modern cognitive neuroscience. The goal of Rhythm, Music and the Brain is an attempt to bring the knowledge of the arts and the sciences and review our current state of study about the brain and music, specifically rhythm. The author provides a thorough examination of the current state of research, including the biomedical applications of neurological music therapy in sensorimotor speech and cognitive rehabilitation. This book will be of interest for the lay and professional reader in the sciences and arts as well as the professionals in the fields of neuroscientific research, medicine, and rehabilitation.

The Neuroscience of You

The Neuroscience of You PDF

Author: Chantel Prat

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-08-02

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1524746614

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From University of Washington professor Chantel Prat comes The Neuroscience of You, a rollicking adventure into the human brain that reveals the surprising truth about neuroscience, shifting our focus from what’s average to an understanding of how every brain is different, exactly why our quirks are important, and what this means for each of us. With style and wit, Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the meaningful ways that our brains are dissimilar from one another. Using real-world examples, along with take-them-yourself tests and quizzes, she shows you how to identify the strengths and weakness of your own brain, while learning what might be going on in the brains of those who are unlike you. With sections like “Focus,” “Navigate,” and “Connect,” The Neuroscience of You helps us see how brains that are engineered differently ultimately take diverse paths when it comes time to prioritize information, use what they’ve learned from experience, relate to other people, and so much more. While other scientists focus on how “the” brain works “on average,” Prat argues that our obsession with commonalities has slowed our progress toward understanding the very things that make each of us unique and interesting. Her field-leading research, employing cutting-edge technology, reveals the truth: Complicated as it may be, no two brains are alike. And individual differences in brain functioning are as pervasive as they are fundamental to defining what “normal” looks like. Adages such as, “I’m not wired that way” intuitively point to the fact that the brains we’re piloting, educating, and parenting are wonderfully distinct, explaining a whole host of phenomena, from how easily a person might learn a second language in adulthood to whether someone feels curious or threatened when faced with new information. This book invites the reader to understand themselves and others by zooming in so close that we all look gray and squishy.

This is Your Brain on Music

This is Your Brain on Music PDF

Author: Daniel Levitin

Publisher: Penguin Group

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780241987353

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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

Music, Math, and Mind

Music, Math, and Mind PDF

Author: David Sulzer

Publisher:

Published: 2021-03-23

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780231193788

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This book offers a lively exploration of the mathematics, physics, and neuroscience that underlie music. Written for musicians and music lovers with any level of science and math proficiency, including none, Music, Math, and Mind demystifies how music works while testifying to its beauty and wonder.

The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs PDF

Author: Daniel J. Levitin

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-08-19

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1101043458

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The author of the New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music reveals music’s role in the evolution of human culture in this thought-provoking book that “will leave you awestruck” (The New York Times). Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut bestseller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted readers as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times bestseller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history. Here he identifies six fundamental song functions or types—friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love—then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. He shows, in effect, how these “six songs” work in our brains to preserve the emotional history of our lives and species. Dr. Levitin combines cutting-edge scientific research from his music cognition lab at McGill University and work in an array of related fields; his own sometimes hilarious experiences in the music business; and illuminating interviews with musicians such as Sting and David Byrne, as well as conductors, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The World in Six Songs is, ultimately, a revolution in our understanding of how human nature evolved—right up to the iPod.

How Music Works

How Music Works PDF

Author: John Powell

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2010-11-03

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0316183679

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"Any readers whose love of music has somehow not led them to explore the technical side before will surely find the result a thoroughly accessible, and occasionally revelatory, primer."—Seattle Post-Intelligencer What makes a musical note different from any other sound? How can you tell if you have perfect pitch? Why do ten violins sound only twice as loud as one? Do your Bob Dylan albums sound better on CD vinyl? John Powell, a scientist and musician, answers these questions and many more in How Music Works, an intriguing and original guide to acoustics. In a clear and engaging voice, Powell leads you on a fascinating journey through the world of music, with lively discussions of the secrets behind harmony timbre, keys, chords, loudness, musical composition, and more. From how musical notes came to be (you can thank a group of stodgy men in 1939 London for that one), to how scales help you memorize songs, to how to make and oboe from a drinking straw, John Powell distills the science and psychology of music with wit and charm.