Quotes from Daniel J. Levitin

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. —Robert Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, p. xii

What are the determinants in how we age? The different systems in our brains age at different rates. Some systems decline as others actually increase in efficiency and effectiveness. The basic message

On average, humans have one testicle

That means that people who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they'll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it. Daydreaming

Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation.

But one mystery has not been solved: the mystery of the human brain and how it gives rise to thoughts and feelings, hopes and desires, love, and the experience of beauty, not to mention dance, visual art, literature, and music.

the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new—the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens.

We're assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumor, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting, and at the same time, we are all doing more.

Daydreaming and mind-wandering, we now know, are a natural state of the brain. This accounts for why we feel so refreshed after it, and why vacations and naps can be so restorative.

What artists and scientists have in common is the ability to live in an open-ended state of interpretation and reinterpretation of the products of our work. The work of artists and scientists is ultimately the pursuit of truth, but members of both camps understand that truth in its very nature is contextual and changeable, dependent on point of view, and that today's truths become tomorrow's disproven hypotheses or forgotten objets d'art.

Conscientiousness comprises industriousness, self-control, stick-to-itiveness, and a desire for order.

The great tennis player John McEnroe used this to his advantage on the courts. When an opponent was performing especially well, for example by using a particularly good backhand, McEnroe would compliment him on it. McEnroe knew this would cause the opponent to think about his backhand, and this thinking disrupted the automatic application of it.

Throughout most of the world and for most of human history, music making was as natural an activity as breathing and walking, and everyone participated. Concert halls, dedicated to the performance of music, arose only in the last several centuries.

neuroscientists have recently discovered that parts of the brain can fall asleep for a few moments or longer without our realizing it. At any given moment, some circuits in the brain may be off-line, slumbering, recouping energy, and as long as we're not calling on them to do something for us, we don't notice.

It is difficult to appreciate the complexity of the brain because the numbers are so huge. The average brain consists of 100 billion neurons.

If an artistic object represents the thing-itself perfectly, it is just another copy of that thing. The point of art is to emphasize some elements at the expense of others...

One of them was Jake Eberts, a film producer whose works include Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Dances with Wolves, Driving Miss Daisy, A River Runs through It, The Killing Fields, and Chicken Run, and whose films received sixty-six Oscar nominations and seventeen Oscar wins (he passed away in 2012).

Getting organized can bring us all to the next level in our lives.

What do you mean you don't sing?! You talk!" Jim told me later, "It was as odd to them as if I told them that I couldn't walk or dance, even though I have both my legs.

We create because we cannot stop ourselves from doing so. Because our brains were made that way.

Nicotinic receptors are so named because they respond to nicotine, whether smoked or chewed, and they're spread throughout the brain. For all the problems it causes to our overall health, it's well established that nicotine can improve the rate of signal detection when a person has been misdirected—that is, nicotine creates a state of vigilance that allows one to become more detail oriented and less dependent on top-down expectations.

Americans spend more money on music than on sex or prescription drugs.

Music has historically been one of the strongest forces binding together the disenfranchised, the alienated...People who do something together that is antisocial or somewhat off-center enjoy a bond...all misfits, but we are bound together in that.

An adjustable noise machine or even a hearing aid can be programmed to provide stimulation at the precise frequency of the tinnitus, thus giving those orphaned neurons some stimulation, which causes them to calm down and, voilà, the tinnitus disappears.