Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World

Product Description

How sound leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are.

Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. In
Of Sound Mind, Nina Kraus examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing for the first time that the processing of sound drives many of the brain’s core functions. Our hearing is always on–we can’t close our ears the way we close our eyes–and yet we can ignore sounds that are unimportant. We don’t just hear; we engage with sounds. Kraus explores what goes on in our brains when we hear a word–or a chord, or a meow, or a screech.

Our hearing brain, Kraus tells us, is vast. It interacts with what we know, with our emotions, with how we think, with our movements, and with our other senses. Auditory neurons make calculations at one-thousandth of a second; hearing is the speediest of our senses. Sound plays an unrecognized role in both healthy and hurting brains. Kraus explores the power of music for healing as well as the destructive power of noise on the nervous system. She traces what happens in the brain when we speak another language, have a language disorder, experience rhythm, listen to birdsong, or suffer a concussion. Kraus shows how our engagement with sound leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are. The sounds of our lives shape our brains, for better and for worse, and help us build the sonic world we live in.

Review

Selected as NPR’s Book of the Day

“Of Sound Mind” by Nina Kraus explains how our brain constructs a meaningful sonic world and shows for the first time that the processing of sound can drive many of the brain’s core functions.—
New Scientist

Drawing on hard science and exuberant appreciation, “Of Sound Mind” examines why we love music, how we make words, and what we mean when we say, “It’s good to hear your voice.” It also, significantly, advocates for creating our own healthy sonic environments, to “allow sound to change us for the better.”
—Salon.com

This is a must-read for anyone who is a musician or who has a fascination with how our own bodies work—or both.  Put it on your to-read list; you won’t be disappointed.
—Skeptophilia

Review

“Nina Kraus is a brilliant communicator in her explorations of music and the brain.
Of Sound Mind is an engaging and entertaining read. With lively analogies and diagrams, the book is accessible for those just getting their ‘ears’ wet, but has much to offer for musicians and researchers as well.”
—
Renée Fleming, soprano and arts and health advocate
 
“A highly informative and clearly written book: Kraus’s enthusiasm for the understanding of the place of sound in our world is infectious. She shows us just how deeply sound, and in particular music, is intertwined in the brain with everything else that makes us who we are: how it can harm and how it can heal. I know of nothing quite like it.” 
—I
ain McGilchrist, Consultant Psychiatrist and author of The Master and His Emissary
 
“One of the most beautiful, evocative, illuminating books ever written about how what we hear shapes who we are. I never wanted this book to end.”
—
Maryanne Wolf, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
 
“Fascinating, clarifying and personal—this simple-to-read, science-based description of hearing will change the way you listen. Bravo!”
—
Gordon Hempton, author of One Square Inch of Silence
 
“A startling work. Sound and rhythm are fundamental mysteries of the universe, and this book connects the dots. What does sound have to do with our daily lives? How does it connect us to the world? How can we understand the power of music and why it sends a chill up our spine? As a lover of sound and the science of sound, Nina Kraus makes the case that the world
is sound.” 
—
Mickey Hart, musicologist and drummer for the Grateful Dead
 
“This is really a book that only Kraus could write, but everyone should read. It will change the way we think about—and v