JAMES BAIRD / Union-Tribune Dan Levitin was an award-winning music producer before he switched to neuroscience to study how the brain perceives music.

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Quick! Recite the alphabet. Odds are, you recalled your ABCs in the form of a song, specifically that tuneful mnemonic most of us learned as children. That's not to say you couldn't recite the alphabet without humming it, but music makes it easier. And that makes neuroscientists like Dan Levitin wonder: What is it about music and the mind?

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