Music And The Mind

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.

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.

There is much music in our lives -yet we know little about its function. Music is one of man's most remarkable inventions - though possibly it may not be his invention at all: like his capacity for language his capacity for music may be a naturally evolved biologic .function. All cultures and societies have music. Music differs from the sounds of speech and from other sounds, but only now do we find ourselves at the threshold of being able to find out how our brain processes musical sounds differently from other sounds. We are going through an exciting time when these questions and the question of how music moves us are being seriously investigated for the first time from the perspective of the co-ordinated functioning of the organism: the perspective of brain function, motor function as well as perception and experience. There is so much we do not yet know. But the roads to that knowledge are being opened, and the coming years are likely to see much progress towards providing answers and raising new questions. These questions are different from those music theorists have asked themselves: they deal not with the structure of a musical score (although that knowledge is important and necessary) but with music in the flesh: music not outside of man to be looked at from written symbols, but music-man as a living entity or system.

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

Blending exciting scientific concepts with an Eastern sense of destiny, this book takes the reader on a journey into consciousness and provides convincing answers to unanswerable questions about life, death, and beyond. At the instant of creation, the universe possessed an absolute unity and symmetry it has not experienced since, and all matter carries a memory of that perfection and yearns to recover it. We are part of this deep cosmic consciousness, from life to death, and into an afterlife that is as essential to our being as the physical life we leave behind. Embracing science, philosophy, mysticism, and religion, this view opens our eyes to the meaning of existence and clarifies our role in the vastness of creation.

The first cognitivist theory of the nature of ineffable, or verbally inexpressible, musical knowledge. Taking a novel approach to a longstanding problem in the philosophy of art, Diana Raffman provides the first cognitivist theory of the nature of ineffable, or verbally inexpressible, musical knowledge. In the process she also sheds light on central issues in the theory of mind. Raffman invokes recent theory in linguistics and cognitive psychology to provide an account of the content and etiology of musical knowledge that "can not be put into words." Within the framework of Lerdahl and Jackendoff's generative theory of music perception, she isolates three kinds of ineffability attending our conscious knowledge of music—access, feeling, and nuance ineffability—and shows how these arise. Raffman makes a detailed comparison of linguistic and musical understanding, culminating in an attack on the traditional idea that human emotions constitute the meaning or semantic content of music. She compares her account of musical ineffability to several traditional approaches to the problem, particularly those of Nelson Goodman and Stanley Cavell. In the concluding chapter, Raffman explores a significant obstacle that her theory poses to Daniel Dennett's propositional theory of consciousness.

How can certain songs carry us through a tough workout, comfort us after a breakup, or unite 50,000 diverse fans? In this fascinating field guide, neuroscientist and opera singer Indre Viskontas investigates what music is and how it can change us for the better—from deep in our neurons to across our entire society. Whether hip-hop fans, classically trained pianists, or vinyl collectors, readers will think about their favorite songs in a whole new way by the end of this book. This is a vibrant and smart gift for any audiophile.

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.