Born in San Francisco, the son of Lloyd Levitin, a businessman and professor, and Sonia Levitin, a novelist. Levitin was raised in Daly City, Moraga, and Palos Verdes, California. He graduated after his junior year at Palos Verdes High School and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied applied mathematics; he enrolled at the Berklee College of Music before dropping out of college to join a succession of bands, work as a record producer, and help found a record label, 415 Records. He returned to school in his thirties, studying cognitive psychology/cognitive science first at Stanford University where he received a BA degree in 1992 (with honors and highest university distinction) and then to the University of Oregon where he received an MSc degree in 1993 and a PhD degree in 1996. He completed post-doctoral fellowships at Paul Allen's Silicon Valley think-tank Interval Research, at the Stanford University Medical School, and at the University of California, Berkeley. His scientific mentors included Roger Shepard, Michael Posner, Douglas Hintzman, John R. Pierce, and Stephen Palmer. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Dartmouth College, and Oregon Health Sciences University.