How music speaks to us

Abstract

This book is an intellectual tour de force, rais-ing many more issues than recent popular works by, for example, Oliver Sacks and Daniel Levitin. Not one for the bus, beach or bath-tub, Music, Language, and the Brain requires focused engagement, but its rewards are rich. Aniruddh Patel offers a thorough analysis of music cognition and its relation to language, and outlines an ambitious and innovative research programme that deepens our under-standing of cognition in general. Music and speech share basic sound ele-ments, and Patel starts by highlighting the similarities and differences between how auditory signals work. The book then delves