Daniel Levitin: Human

Daniel Levitin is American psychologist. Explore interesting quotes on human.
Daniel Levitin: 152   quotes 1   like

“And it has only been in the last hundred years or so that the ties between musical sound and human movement have been minimized.”

Daniel Levitin

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)
Context: It is only in the last five hundred years that music has become a spectator activity—the thought of a musical concert in which a class of "experts" performed for an appreciative audience was virtually unkown throughout our history as a species. And it has only been in the last hundred years or so that the ties between musical sound and human movement have been minimized.

Music

“Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and”

Daniel Levitin

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)
Context: Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.

Music , Communication

“The best estimates are that it takes a minimum of fifty thousand years for an adaptation to show up in the human genome. This is called evolutionary lag… Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a very different lifestyle…”

Daniel Levitin

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

“The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.”

Daniel Levitin

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Truth , Art

“Musical instruments are among the oldest human-made artifacts we have found. …Music predates agriculture in the history of our species.”

Daniel Levitin

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Music , History

“Out of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye.”

Daniel Levitin book The Organized Mind

The Organized Mind (2014)

“Human process music using both absolute and relational processing… we attend to the actual pitches and duration we hear in music, as well as their relative values. This dual mode of processing is rare among species… These modes of processing and the brain mechanisms that gave rise to them were necessary for the development of language, music, poetry, and art.”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Art , Music

“Miller and his colleague Marty Haselton at UCLA have shown that creativity trumps wealth, at least in human females.”

Daniel Levitin

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Wealth

“Primates, some birds, and humans have mirror neurons… that fire both when performing an action and when observing someone else performing… We've found mirror neurons in Broca's area, a part… involved in speaking, and learning to speak. …our mirror neurons may be firing when we see or hear musicians perform … in preparation for being able to mirror or echo them back as part of a signaling system.”

Daniel Levitin

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Bird , Learning , Parting

“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…”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Love , Friendship , Religion , Nature

“Music has been a shaping force… music has been there to guide the development of human nature.”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Music , Nature

“Anyone who wants to understand human nature, the interaction between brain and culture, between evolution and society, has to take a close look at the role that music has held in the lives of humans.”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Music , Understanding , Nature