Of Sound Mind - Nina Kraus ***

Like most genres, popular science goes through phases - for the last couple of years, neuroscience has been the in thing, to the extent that I tend to think 'not another brain book' when I see one - but for someone who has always sung, the idea of finding out more about the relationship between the brain and sound, especially music, was attractive. 

Nina Kraus is certainly enthusiastic about her topic and generally the book is well-pitched (appropriate given the musical connotations) and readable. However, Kraus does occasionally fall for a classic academic's failing of making use of unnecessary jargon. For example, she defines two terms 'afferent' and 'efferent', apparently adjectives for direction of travel. Kraus even points out how easily confused they are - so why use them? This isn't a textbook - there's no need to load the reader with all the jargon.

Some sections worked particularly well for me. The chapters on language and sound were very interesting, as were those on noise and ageing. Kraus demonstrates well how sustained background noise - even at relatively low levels - can have a negative impact on achievements. The positive outcomes of being an active musician are also of interest. I use the term 'active' here, as Kraus emphasises that listening to music is good, but to gain the benefits she mentions you have to play an instrument or sing, not just listen. Those benefits are in having an improvement in your 'sound mind', something Kraus defines as 'sound, what our brains do with it, and also what this does to us.' It seems that 'Music does an exceptional job of engaging [the cognitive, motor, reward and sensory] systems, providing effective avenues for learning through sound.'

As is almost always the case in neuroscience books, there is too much text given over to labelling bits of the brain and describing their role. By the time I'm half way through these sections I've already forgotten what all those labels mean - science shouldn't be about learning labels. In at least one case, too, there is evidence of the author being too close to the subject - we are told about hair cells in ear, but it's not mentioned that they aren't actually hairs.

A particularly poor aspect of the book are the illustrations, which look like they belong in a self-published effort. Many of them fall into one or other of the two most common problems with DIY illustrations - they either don't add anything to the text or they are so small and/or murky that it's impossible to make out what it is that they are illustrating.

Overall, I repeatedly found it hard to find any solid meaning in the content of the book. When defining the sound mind, for example, Kraus comments 'I think the sound mind is a force behind a continuum from the past to the present and into the future.' That's alright, then. Time and again, this kind of vague waffly comment made me struggle to follow what was intended. I'm sure some will love it, but for me Of Sound Mind could have been better.

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Review by Brian Clegg