Daniel Levitin, the McGill University professor of neuroscience and music and author of the 2006 book This Is Your Brain on Music (Dutton/Penguin), converses with former Talking Head and rock renaissance man David Byrne for Seed magazine. (Thanks to Bookslut for the link.) If you read only one article today about monkey neurons, chairs made of macaroni, trance states, the cash register sound in Pink Floyd’s “Money,” and the genetic disorder Williams Syndrome (which causes the affected to be “hypersocial and hypermusical”), let this be the one.

Levitin will be appearing at a BOOKED! panel discussion in Toronto on Saturday, June 9.