How This is Your Brain on Music Transformed Neuroscience
The publication of 'This Is Your Brain on Music' two decades ago significantly impacted the field of neuroscience by legitimizing music as a subject of study. It attracted new researchers and funding opportunities, transforming the academic landscape surrounding music perception and cognition. The book also fostered interdisciplinary collaboration, leading to new insights into the social and cognitive roles of music in human development.
- ▪The book helped establish music as a legitimate area of research within neuroscience.
- ▪Since its publication, there has been an influx of talented scholars entering the field of music and cognition.
- ▪Research has shown that music plays a crucial role in social connection from early childhood.
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Twenty years ago, when This Is Your Brain on Music was published, the idea that music could be studied with the tools of biology and neuroscience was a niche one. When it came out, I was junior faculty at Northwestern, working in one of the country’s only departments devoted to this topic (the department of “Music Theory and Cognition”). The field had only formally existed for something like twenty years. A scholarly organization, the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC), was founded in 1990, and an academic journal, Music Perception, in 1983.Article continues after advertisement But most of the research being done was carried out by people who had the university equivalent of a day job.
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