“In a country that was still racially segregated and prejudiced, music was among the first domains in which African-Americans thrived alongside whites.”

American-Canadian cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist

Daniel Levitin is an American-Canadian cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, writer, musician, and record producer. He is known for his work on music and the mind, and for writing widely read books about how people think, hear, and respond to sound. He has written four New York Times best-selling books, including This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies. His work brings together psychology, neuroscience, and music, and often explores how the brain processes sound and why music matters to human life.