The Musical Brain

A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of micro-fiction. A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of microfiction, César Aira–the author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely one hundred pages long–The Musical Brain & Other Stories comprises twenty tales about oddballs, freaks, and loonies. Aira, with his fuga hacia adelante or "flight forward" into the unknown, gives us imponderables to ponder and bizarre and seemingly out-of-context plot lines, as well as thoughtful and passionate takes on everyday reality. The title story, first published in the New Yorker, is the creme de la creme of this exhilarating collection.

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 is everywhere; it pumps through earbuds, elevators, commercials, arenas, and it's even beamed out to space. But - despite its rampant abundance in human experience, history, and culture - music has no clear adaptive function. This begs the question: What are the origins of music, and why does it play such an enormous role in our lives?Did music arise from sexual selection, from the faculty of speech, as a group-oriented communication device, or is it merely a fortuitous side effect of various perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that serve other functions?In this multidisciplinary review of academic literature, Abel James incorporates research in neuroscience, linguistics, perception and challenges a wide range of eminent thinkers to uncover the origins of music and explore its profound effects on the human brain."The Musical Brain is a technical review of extraordinary breadth. There are books that you read and there are books that you study. The Musical Brain falls into the latter category."- Tony Federico

Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music is a collaborative work that discusses musical perception in the context of medical science. The book is comprised of 24 chapters that are organized into two parts. The first part of the text details the various aspects of nervous function involved in musical activity, which include neural and mechanicals aspects of singing; neurophysiological interpretation of musical ability; and ecstatic and synesthetic experiences during musical perception. The second part deals with the effects of nervous disease on musical function, such as musicogenic epilepsy, the amusias, and occupational palsies. The book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and practitioners of disciplines that deal with the nervous system, such as psychology, neurology, and psychiatry.

Did you ever ask whether music makes people smart, why a Parkinson patient's gait is improved with marching tunes, and whether Robert Schumann was suffering from schizophrenia or Alzheimer's disease? This broad but comprehensive book deals with history and new discoveries about music and the brain. It provides a multi-disciplinary overview on music processing, its effects on brain plasticity, and the healing power of music in neurological and psychiatric disorders. In this context, the disorders the plagued famous musicians and how they affected both performance and composition are critically discussed, and music as medicine, as well as music as a potential health hazard are examined. Among the other topics covered are: how music fit into early conceptions of localization of function in the brain, the cultural roots of music in evolution, and the important roles played by music in societies and educational systems. Topic: Music is interesting to almost everybody Orientation: This book looks at music and the brain both historically and in the light of the latest research findings Comprehensiveness: This is the largest and most comprehensive volume on "music and neurology" ever written! Quality of authors: This volume is written by a unique group of real world experts representing a variety of fields, ranging from history of science and medicine to neurology and musicology

Dividing the sum total of human musical achievement, from Beethoven to The Beatles, Busta Rhymes to Bach, into just six fundamental forms, Levitin illuminates, through songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love, how music has been instrumental in the evolution of language, thought and culture. And how, far from being a bit of a song and dance, music is at the core of what it means to be human. A one-time record producer, now a leading neuroscientist, Levitin has composed a catchy and startlingly ambitious narrative that weaves together Darwin and Dionne Warwick, memoir and biology, anthropology and a jukebox of anecdote to create nothing less than the ' soundtrack of civilisation' .

Daniel Levitin showcases his daring theory of “six songs,” illuminating how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms—for knowledge, friendship, ceremony, joy, comfort, and love. Blending cutting-edge scientific findings with his own sometimes hilarious experiences as a musician and music-industry professional, Levitin’s sweeping study also incorporates wisdom gleaned from interviews with icons ranging from Sting and Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell,Willie Nelson, and David Byrne.