What effect does music have on the brain? Does music make you smarter? Is music beneficial? These are some of the questions Michel Habib sets out to answer in this clear, well-documented book.

Among the mysteries of the human brain, one question has long haunted scientists, teachers and philosophers: how and why has evolution endowed our brain, among all its remarkable qualities, with the art of music? And this equally singular tendency to use rhythm and melody to communicate with others, a mother with her baby, a dancer with his partner, a priest with his flock, a soldier in a parade, an orchestra with its audience?

Advances in neuroscience have begun to provide some answers to these age-old questions by demonstrating, with increasing precision, that our brain is in fact an eminently musical organ, housing thousands of resonators, veritable rhythm boxes constantly animated by oscillatory activity. It is by synchronising with this oscillatory activity of the networks of neurons that speech and music take on their full meaning; it is also thanks to this synchronisation that we communicate with others, transforming our brain into a fundamentally social tool. Finally, it is by acting on this same rhythmic activity that the practice of music is capable of curing various breakdowns or dysfunctions of the brain, from childhood to old age, as medicine is demonstrating ever more clearly.

Throughout the book, the author guides us, with precision and pedagogy, along the fascinating path of his experience as a neurologist and as a musician, ending with a synthetic vision of music as a powerful instrument of connection and communication, capable both of circulating information between the different parts of our brain and between our brain and that of other, but also of repairing these connections when they are defective.