Daniel J. Levitin

Dr. Daniel Levitin earned his B.A. in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science at Stanford University, and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Oregon, researching complex auditory patterns and pattern processing in expert and non-expert populations.

He completed post-doctoral training at Stanford University Medical School (in Neuroimaging) and at UC Berkeley (in Cognitive Psychology). He has consulted on audio sound source separation for the U.S. Navy, and on audio quality for several rock bands and record labels (including the Grateful Dead and Steely Dan), and served as one of the “Golden Ears” expert listeners in the original Dolby AC3 compression tests. He worked for two years at the Silicon Valley think tank Interval Research Corporation.

He taught at Stanford University in the Department of Computer Science, the Program in Human-Computer Interaction, and the Departments of Psychology, Anthropology, Computer Music, and History of Science. Currently, he is a James McGill Professor of Psychology, Behavioural Neuroscience, and Music at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec), and Dean of Arts and Humanities at the Minerva Schools at KGI.

He is the author of the #1 best-seller This Is Your Brain On Music (Dutton/Penguin, 2006), which was published in nineteen languages and spent more than one year on the New York Times Bestseller list. His second book, The World in Six Songs (Dutton/Penguin, 2008) hit the bestseller lists in its first week of release. His newest book is the #1 best-seller The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information, (Dutton/Penguin 2014).