Daniel Levitin to present at New Yorker conference

Groundbreaking neuroscientist among 40 leading cultural voices

Psychology professor, musician and best-selling author Daniel Levitin, Director of the McGill Laboratory for the Study of Music Cognition, Perception and Expertise, will be among the presenters at The New Yorker Conference/2012: Stories from the Near Future in New York, May 6 and 7, 2007. The conference is a public gathering of society’s most innovative thinkers on matters ranging from design to art to Web marketing to computer games to politics.

Levitin, author of the current international best-seller This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and a former record producer for Stevie Wonder and Blue Öyster Cult, among others, will preview his unique research on how music affects the human brain, why we love the music we love and why certain songs are inextricably linked to times and places in our lives – work that has established him as one of the world’s leading authorities on music and the brain.

Dr. Levitin will be accompanying musician and visual artist David Byrne on guitar as he debuts a new song at the conference. Author and political blogger Arianna Huffington and New Yorker writers Malcolm Gladwell, Ken Auletta, David Denby, Judith Thurman and Jeffrey Toobin will be among the other presenters.

On the Web: The New Yorker Conference/2012: Stories from the Near Future