Why do we love music? What enables us to create it, perceive it, and enjoy it? In From Perception to Pleasure, Robert Zatorre provides answers to these questions from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, explaining how we get from perception of sound patterns to pleasurable responses. The book is organized around a central thesis: that pleasure in music arises from interactions between cortical loops that enable processing of sound patterns, and subcortical circuits responsible for reward and valuation. This model integrates knowledge derived from basic neuroscience of the auditory system and of reward mechanisms with the concept that perception and pleasure depend on mechanisms of prediction, anticipation, and valuation. The first part of the book describes the pathways to and from the auditory cortex that generate internal representations of musical structure at different levels of abstraction, which then interact with memory, sensory-motor, and other cognitive mechanisms that are essential to perceive and produce music. The second part of the book focuses on the functional anatomy of the dopaminergic reward system; its involvement in musical pleasure; the links between prediction, surprise, and complexity; and what happens when the system is disrupted. The book is richly illustrated to help the reader follow the scientific findings. Most of all, From Perception to Pleasure provides an integrative model for a large body of scientific knowledge that explains how patterns of abstract sounds can generate profoundly moving hedonic experiences.

"From Perception to Pleasure offers a detailed, concise, and beautifully organized account of Robert Zatorre's groundbreaking work. His research into how music impacts the brain and shapes our emotional lives is revelatory. Zatorre builds a crucial framework for fully integrating creative arts therapies into health and medicine." - Renée Fleming, soprano and arts & health advocate

"Robert Zatorre is both a musician and a scientist. There is nothing surprising about his passion for music but the intelligence and persistence with which he has investigated his muse are unusual and have been astonishingly productive. A good part of what we know about the perception of music and about the pleasures music brings to the human soul comes from Zatorre's unique dedication. How fortunate we are now that he has decided to tell the story of his lifelong pursuit in an insightful book that may well produce as much pleasure as the music that inspired it." - Antonio Damasio, University Professor; David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy; Director, Brain and Creativity Institute, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California, Hanna Damasio, University Professor; Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Neurology; Director, Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center, University of Southern California

"What happens in our brain when music reaches our ears? How do neurons encode, with remarkable precision, the intricate rhythmic and tonal structures that constitute a musical stream? And above all, why do some musical pieces trigger expectation, surprise, bliss, chills and goosebumps? In this highly accessible and scientifically up-to-date synthesis, Robert Zatorre, the renowned expert of musical cognition and its brain mechanisms, dissects it all for us, to our greater enjoyment." - Stanislas Dehaene, professor at Collège de France and author of Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read and The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics

"His pioneering book, based on profound research, is technical but always accessible." - Andrew Robinson, Nature

"Why do we like music so much? To find out, cognitive neuroscientist Robert Zatorre analyzes how neural circuits process different aspects of musical cognition, such as perceiving distinct pitches or imagining a tune in your head long after your first listen. Zatorre posits that our enjoyment emerges from functional interactions between circuits that control cognition, perception and our reward system. His descriptions of these interactions provide a comprehensive look at the neurobiological basis for musical pleasure." - The Transmitter

"This volume may appear slim, but it embodies an extraordinary achievement." - Choice