This is Your Brain on Music Dan Levitin Department of Psychology McGill University Friday, Oct. 12, 2007 11: 00 a.m., Boulder Auditorium—Boulder 1:00 p.m., Red Auditorium—Gaithersburg (VTC from Boulder)

What do we know about music and the brain?  Are the brains of musicians different from the brains of non-musicians? Why do some people become experts and others -- with the same amount of practice -- do not? Why do we like the music we like? What are the neural similarities between language and music?  By the age of 5 we have all learned, implicitly, the rules of what notes go together and which don’t.  How is the brain able to do this?  How does music affect our emotions? Music triggers the reward centers in our brains so that we are hardwired for music. Is music more fundamental to our species than language?

Anyone outside NIST wishing to attend must be sponsored by a NIST employee and receive a visitor badge. For more information, call Kum J. Ham at 301-975-4203.

Colloquia are videotaped and available in the NIST Research Library.