This book is for music lovers who want to learn about the science of music. It will show the reader what music is made of, how musical sounds become melodies, and how music training imprints on the human brain. The book addresses a wide audience, from the general public to parents of young children, music therapists, music teachers, philosophers, and psychologists. It highlights the role of music in child development and in healing. Readers will also find some interesting facts about the history of music and the basics of the science of emotion. The book argues that studying music, this language of emotions, will help our understanding of human consciousness.
Dr Marina Korsakova-Kreyn teaches at the Psychology Department at Touro College, New York City. She was trained as a classical pianist in her native Russia (Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory). She also studied Physics and Mathematics at Lobachevsky University, Russia and she obtained her PhD in Cognition and Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research focuses on melodic shapes, tonal space, and emotions in music. Her most important publications include books Music: A Story of Tonal Gravity, Melodic Objects, and Motion in Tonal Space (2015) and The Universe of Music (2010), and the articles Language of Music and Its Psychophysical Foundations (2019), Two-level Model of Embodied Cognition in Music (2018), Emotional Processing in Music: Study in Affective Responses to Tonal Modulation (co-authored with Dr W. Jay Dowling, 2014), and Bach, Escher, and Mental Rotation: An Empirical Study in the Perception of Visual and Melodic Congruency (2014).
