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Promotional video on Dan Levitin’s book:

YouTube – This Your Brain On Music: Punk

About the title of my new book: Most people born before 1984 or so and raised in the U.S. remember a PSA (public service announcement) that ran for many years as part of the government’s “say no to drugs” campaign. In that ad, which has been parodied many times from “Married With Children” to Weird Al Yankovic, a man holds up a single egg and says “This is your brain.” he then cracks it onto a frying pan and as it cooks, he says “this is your brain on drugs. . . any questions?”

The title of my new book is a nod to that old Reagan-era ad, because of new research that shows that music activates many of the same pleasure centers as drugs do. Also, there is lots of new research on how people use music in their everyday lives; many people use music for mood-regulation, and for self-medication. We use music the way we use drugs such as caffeine and alcohol – to help us get out of bed in the morning or finish an exercise workout, to calm us after a stressful day, or to ease social interactions. As a fan once told Joni Mitchell, “before there was Prozac, there was you.”

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