Books like This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

01

The Enigma of Reason

Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber · Psychology

The standard account of human reasoning treats it as a tool for individual problem-solving that happens to malfunction under certain conditions.

Both dig into evolutionary psychology.

02

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · Psychology

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford who argues that the conscious self is a late, small, and largely uninformed participant in the brain's activity.

Both dig into neuroscience.

03

Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychology

Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote this short book — genuinely short at under thirty thousand words — as an accessible introduction to seven core findings of modern neuroscience, each presented as a lesson that overturns something most people believe.

Both dig into neuroscience.

04

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson · Science

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's attempt to understand the scientific story of everything — from the Big Bang to the emergence of modern humans — by spending three years talking to scientists and reading science history.

A kindred science read.

05

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky · Science

Behave is Robert Sapolsky's attempt to explain why humans do what they do — the violence, the altruism, the tribalism, the heroism — by working through every layer of biology that contributes to a single act.

Both dig into neuroscience.

06

How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker · Science

How the Mind Works is Steven Pinker's synthesis of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, built around a central thesis: the mind is a computational system — a neural computer — shaped by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems that faced our ancestors on the Pleistocene savanna.

Shares perception and emotion with This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

07

The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

V. S. Ramachandran · Science

The Tell-Tale Brain is V.

Shares neuroscience and perception with This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

08

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychology

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a neuroscientist and psychologist at Northeastern University who has spent thirty years studying emotion, and her conclusion challenges the most widely held view of what emotions are.

Shares neuroscience and perception with This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

09

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee · Psychology

V.

Shares neuroscience and perception with This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

10

The Listening Book

W.A. Mathieu · Philosophy

The Listening Book is W.A.

Shares music and perception with This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

11

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Oliver Sacks · Psychology

Oliver Sacks was a neurologist who thought in stories.

Shares neuroscience and perception with This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.

12

Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson · Science

Altered Traits is a careful assessment of what neuroscience actually knows about meditation, written by two researchers who have spent their careers at the intersection of contemplative practice and empirical science.

Both dig into neuroscience.