Of Sound Mind How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World

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.

Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist who has done pathbreaking research on sound and hearing for more than thirty years, is Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Communication Sciences, and Otolaryngology at Northwestern University.

Introduction
Of Sound Mind: A Partnership between Sound and the Brain 1
I How Sound Works
1 Signals Outside the Head 15
2 Signals Inside the Head 31
3 Learning: Merging Signals Outside the Head with the Signals Inside 55
4 The Listening Brain: A Quest 75
II Our Sonic Selves
5 Music Is the Jackpot: Sensing, Thinking, Moving, Feeling 95
6 Rhythm: Inside and Outside the Head 109
7 The Root of Language Is Sound 127
8 Music and Language: A Partnership 153
9 The Bilingual Brain 173
10 Birdsong 189