Daniel Levitin

"Music combines the temporal aspects of film and dance with the spatial aspects of painting and sculpture, where pitch space takes the place of three-dimensional physical space... frequency maps in the…"

"The argument is that there may be a cluster of genes that influences both outgoingness and musicality. If this were true, we would expect to find that deviations in one ability co-occur with deviation…"

"The six types of song that have shaped human nature—friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love songs—I've come to think are obvious..."

"We can say that speaking French "runs in families," but I don't know anyone who would claim that speaking French is genetic."

"The brain's synapses are programmed to grow for a number of years, making new connections. After that time, there is a shift toward pruning, to get rid of unneeded connections. ...Neuroplasticity is t…"

"When a musical piece is too simple we tend not to like it, finding it trivial. When it is too complex, we tend not to like it, finding it unpredictable—we don't perceive it to be grounded in anything …"

"Studies of violin players by Thomas Elbert have shown that the region of the brain responsible for moving the left hand... increases in size as a result of practice."

"The brain is very good at self-delusion."