Why You Like Music

October 24, 2009

Interview with Dan Levitin author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

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Mike Carruthers:
Interesting thing about music.

Dan Levitin:
Wherever there are people there seems to be music. As far as we know every known culture on the planet today has music and that seems to have been so as far back as we know.

Dan Levitin author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession says we spend more money on music in this country than we do on prescription drugs. And interestingly, people use music a little like a drug.

They use music to help get them going in the morning or to help them make it through a work-out. Or to relax at the end of the day. One of the things we know is that it stimulates the same pleasure centers in the brain - the same neurons as a number of other unrelated pleasurable experiences: When we eat chocolate; when you find a $50 bill on the ground - and music stimulates those same regions.

And this is fascinating - you don't actually have to listen to music to get its benefits. You simply have to imagine it.

 
Listening to music and imagining music invoke virtually identical brain structures. It's as though you've got a little CD player in your head when you imagine music. And you put it on "Play" and it tricks your neurons into thinking that it is actually playing.

There is no evidence that listening to music makes you smarter. However...

There is evidence that children who learn to play an instrument early - like before the age of 7 or 8 - do better in a number of mental tasks... that their thinking might actually be sped up.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.