The air around you is silently humming—a googol of molecules quivering with heat. The jangle of city life sends compressed waves of air molecules splashing against your eardrums, generating the vibrations that your brain interprets as sound. But what happens when, above the din, a few bars of a familiar song reach you? What separates the experience of music from that of any other sound? Daniel Levitin, Associate Professor of Psychology at McGill University and author of This is Your Brain on Music, is here to find out. While the music we love may send shivers down our spine or put a lump in our throat, ultimately these sensations originate in the brain. Brain scans of music listeners show a veritable lightshow of activity in parts of the brain associated with life’s other great pleasures, e.g. sex, chocolate, success. Don’t peg him for a cold dissector of emotion, however—as a music lover himself, Levitin seeks to bring a deeper understanding of how these simple vibrations in our ears cause our hearts to sing.

Wed., Oct. 24, 7 p.m., 2007