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Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. “Powerful and compassionate. . . . A book that not only contributes to our understanding of the elusive magic of music but also illuminates the strange workings, and misfirings, of the human mind.” —The New York Times In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music. Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Revised & enlarged edition (September 23, 2008)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 425 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400033535


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 39


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1.18 x 8 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #21,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Music Appreciation (Books) #31 in Popular Neuropsychology #579 in Personal Transformation Self-Help


#2 in Music Appreciation (Books):


#31 in Popular Neuropsychology:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • A grace note not to be questioned, but to be enjoyed
When Oliver Sacks talks, I listen. When he writes, he takes subjects and follows them to the very nerve-endings and synapses of the brain itself. He never writes without including some aspect of his amazing and diverse life, such as when he introduced the Island of the Colorblind by talking about his love for the cycads which were growing in the London Botanical Gardens. The island whose population were color blind also had these primitive cycad trees, whose existence dates back to Paleozoic times. I was amazed to discover that the subtropical sago palm which grows everywhere around New Orleans was not a true palm, but one of these ancient dinosaur age plants. When I read his books, my life changes — I can never look at a sago plant without admiration since that book. Nor can I think of cold and hot lights (fluorescence and tungsten bulbs) without thinking of his two uncles, one who pioneered in cold light, and the other a pioneer in hot lights, namely, his Uncle Tungsten of the eponymous book. With this book, he has attacked music in the same way, delving deeply into his own experiences with music and deeply into what happens inside the minds and brains of many patients with various brain and nervous system anomalies which shed light on how our human body works vis-à-vis music. If you thought you understood music because you are a music lover, Sacks will open his bag of tricks and surprise and delight with novel aspects of music which few have heard of or discovered in their own lives, up until now. And once more he has changed my own life. This time, not in a pleasant way. Did you ever notice a clock ticking in the room you were in? And once you've noticed the darn thing ticking how hard it is to get rid of the ticking? You cannot get it to stop ticking by conscious effort(1); the harder you try the more aware you become of its incessant tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock . . . Well, during his discussion of tinnitis(2) he describes various kinds of tinnitis, one of which matched a low level of tinnitis in my own ears, one of which I was hardly conscious of, until he mentioned it, I was plagued by my consciousness of it for several days, before I lapsed once more into blissful unawareness of it, but never again into blissful ignorance of it. Like Adam seduced by the apple that Eve-like Oliver offered, I have gotten knowledge of my tinnitis, and it become present whenever I think of or write about it. Let this be your warning, if you suspect you have low-level tinnitis, it may arise into consciousness while this review or the book, but rest assured, it will lapse once more into normal background noise in a short time. I recall Betty Rankin, aka Big Mama of WWOZ.org fame, once saying over the radio, that she listened to WWOZ radio all night to help her sleep, and now I understand that she likely had enough tinnitis to otherwise keep her awake. My tinnitis is more like light hissing of a steam radiator, very constant and low volume, more like the white noise that some people buy and electronic generator for in order to help them sleep. Me, I have a white noise generator built-in. In his Preface Sacks writes about music and quotes Schopenhauer, "The inexpressible depth of music — so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain . . . Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves." On this point, I would respectfully disagree esteemed philosopher. Once when the French Academy was debating whether a bear could dance, a man by the window looked out and saw a dancing bear in the street. In the face of contradictory evidence, a philosophical argument cannot stand. To those alive today who agree with Schopenhauer's last statement above, I would merely ask them to visit New Orleans and observe and participate in how music is integrated into life and all of its events. We use the expression a bolt from the blue to refer to ideas which come to us in a flash, but Sacks begins his book with a story of a man, a doctor, who was talking on a pay phone outdoors when he was hit by a lightning flash which laid him out on the ground, dead, for all practical purposes. He reports floating above the scene, watching a woman giving him CPR. [page 4] Then I was surrounded by a bluish-white light . . . an enormous feeling of well-being and peace. The highest and lowest points of my life raced by me. No emotion associated with these . . . pure thought, pure ecstasy. I had the perception of accelerating, being drawn up . . . there was speed and direction. Then, as I was saying to myself, 'This is the most glorious feeling I have ever had' — SLAM! I was back." Dr. Cicoria knew he was back in his own body because he had pain — pain from the burns on his face and his left foot, where the electrical charge had entered and exited his body — and, he realized, "only bodies have pain." He wanted to go back, he wanted to tell the woman to stop giving him CPR, to let him go; but it was too late — he was firmly back among the living. After a minute or two, when he could speak, he said, "It's okay — I'm a doctor!" The woman (she turned out to be an intensive-care-unit nurse) replied, "A few minutes ago, you weren't." The police finally took the doctor home instead of the hospital and later tests by cardiologist showed no problems. Just when his life seemed to have returned to normal several weeks later, he developed an intense desire to listen to piano music. He didn't own a piano, so he got recordings to satisfy his craze. [page 5] This was completely out of keeping with anything in his past. He did not have a piano in his house. What music he did listen to tended to be rock music. With this sudden onset of craving for piano music, he began to buy recordings and became especially enamored of a Vladimir Ashkenazy recording of Chopin favorites — the Military Polonaise, the Winter Wind Etude; the Black Key Étude, the A-flat Polonaise, the B-flat Minor Scherzo. "I loved them all," Cicoria said. "I had the desire to play them. I ordered all the sheet music. At this point, one of our babysitters asked if she could store her piano in our house-so now, just when I craved one, a piano arrived, a nice little upright. It suited me fine. I could hardly read the music, could barely play, but I started to teach myself." It had been more than thirty years since the few piano lessons of his boyhood, and his fingers seemed stiff and awkward. This was only an appetizer for what was to come. Soon he heard music in his head. [page 5, 6] "The first time," he said, "it was in a dream. I was in a tux, onstage; I was playing something I had written. I woke up, startled, and the music was still in my head. I jumped out of bed, started trying to write down as much of it as I could remember. But I hardly knew how to notate what I heard." This was not too successful — he had never tried to write or notate music before. But whenever he sat down at the piano to work on the Chopin, his own music "would come and take me over. It had a very powerful presence." The music in his head seemed to "come from Heaven" as Mozart said about his music. Soon a music teacher came to help write down his music. Other than that, this was "a solitary pursuit, between himself and his muse." (Page 7) Suddenly out of nowhere, like a grace note in music which doesn't appear in the written score, Cicoria's love of music appears in his life and his life is enhanced by it. Dr. Cicoria's story inspired me to write this poem (Copyright 2010 by Bobby Matherne). A grace note not to be questioned Whether it be flat or sharp — A grace note a lucky strike A lightning strike not to be questioned But to be enjoyed. A grace note, A fillup A flare A soupçon of music. In his Preface, Sacks writes about the "extraordinary tenacity of musical memory" saying that "so much of what is heard during one's early years may be 'engraved' on the brain for the rest of one's life." Clearly he is correct about this, but he does not go far enough, lacking the insights of the science of doyletics which postulates that every event in one's life is "engraved" on the brain indefinitely. Not for the rest of ones life, however, because it is easy using the speed trace memory technique to remove events which would otherwise remain engraved for the rest of one's life. As one begins to understand how one removes consciously these engraved events from one's early life, one can see that many of events are removed unconsciously as one matures(4). These "engraved events" are called doylic events or simply doyles and for simplicity they are assumed be stored in doylic memory, which name is necessary to distinguish it from just plain memory (or cognitive memory). Doylic memory hold physical body states which includes a vast array of events in the body of the pre-five-year-old child: hearing, speaking, walking, handling objects, recognizing objects through their orientation, and various internal states we label generically as sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, joy, happiness, gladness, among many other states. When I read the case history of Mrs. N. I wondered if a simple speed trace might have kept her from needing a partial temporal lobectomy. [page 28] She had loved the Neapolitan songs, which reminded her of her childhood. ("The old songs," she said, "they were always in the family; they always put them on.") She found them "very romantic, emotional. . . they had a meaning." But now that they triggered her seizures, she began to dread them. She became particularly apprehensive about weddings, coming as she did from a large Sicilian family, because such songs were always played at celebrations and family gatherings. "If the band started playing," Mrs. N. said, "I would run out. . . . I had half a minute or less to get away." Since our research into doyletics has found that doylic memories which trigger migraine, asthma, allergies, rashes, and various kinds of automatic responses, it seems possible that a simple minute or two speed trace could remove the very trigger which caused her grand mal seizures. I leave this as an open question, but one could promise relief without surgery for many people who suffer various kinds of seizures. The trace procedure is very fast and after short training(5), it can be used by the patient on themselves upon the slightest symptom of the seizure coming on. One of the keys to a general acceptance of the science of doyletics would be a physiological confirmation of the Memory Transition Age of five years old. Extensive traces going back 35 years have shown that if a doyle is traced back before the age of 5, it will not return while traces only going to ages 6 or older will allow the doyle to return at some future time. From the description of how the functional MRI scans were able to notice the filling of musical gaps, it seems clear that a functional MRI could provide physiological confirmation of the Memory Transition Age. [page 33] Physiological confirmation of such "filling in" by involuntary musical imagery has recently been obtained by William Kelley and his colleagues at Dartmouth, who used functional MRI to scan the auditory cortex while their subjects listened to familiar and unfamiliar songs in which short segments had been replaced by gaps of silence. The silent gaps embedded in familiar songs were not noticed consciously by their subjects, but the researchers observed that these gasp "induced greater activation in the auditory association areas than did silent gaps embedded in unknown songs; this was true for gaps in songs with lyrics and without lyrics." A speed trace converts a doylic memory into a cognitive memory. The same stimulus which triggered the doylic memory before trigger thereafter only a cognitive memory. Thus the region where the doylic memory had been stored since before five (engraved in the brain) will be bypassed after a speed trace, and instead a section of the cortex will be activated. A functional MRI before a speed trace should show activity in the limbic region's amygdaline structures and none in the cortex, and after the trace, there should be no activity in the same limbic region, but activity showing up in the cortex itself. This research work will be an enormous boon to humankind. It will be done sometime, but why not now? The equipment and the hypotheses are ready for testing and confirmation. Sacks described several instances of hallucinatory music playing in his head. Here is one of them. [page 280] I had another musical dream, and this too continued into the waking state. Here, in contrast to the Mozart, I found something deeply disturbing and unpleasant about the music, and longed for it to stop. I had a shower, a cup of coffee, went for a walk, shook my head, played a mazurka on the piano — to no avail. The hateful hallucinatory music' continued unabated. Finally I phoned a friend, Orlan Fox, and said that I was hearing songs that I could not stop, songs that seemed to me full of melancholy and a sort of horror. The worst thing, I added, was that the songs were in German, a language I did not know. Orlan asked me to sing or hum some of the songs. I did so, and there was a long pause. "Have you abandoned some of your young patients?" he asked. "Or destroyed some of your literary children?" "Both," I answered. "Yesterday. I resigned from the children's unit at the hospital where I have been working, and I burned a book of essays I had just written. . . . How did you guess?" "Your mind is playing Mahler's Kindertotenlieder," he said, "his songs of mourning for the death of children." I was amazed by this, for I rather dislike Mahler's music and would normally find it quite difficult to remember in detail, let alone sing, any of his Kindertotenlieder. But here my dreaming mind, with infallible precision, had come up with an appropriate symbol of the previous day's events. And in the moment that Orlan interpreted the dream, the music disappeared; it has never recurred in the thirty years since. Once more Oliver Sacks has set a table before me with a feast of incredible stories and amazing insights. His willingness to share his own stories make all of his stories more believable. One can read two dozen books about how the human brain processes music or simply read this one. Sacks has done the homework for us, provided a crib sheet for us, and understanding the human brain just a little simpler for the non-neuroscientist reader. Something you can find out more about in Bobby Matherne's DIGESTWORLD Issue#105. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2013 by Bobby Matherne
    • Musicophilia: A five-star read for the music lover in you
The New York Times has labeled Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia, "one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century." Oliver Sacks, M.D. is a neurologist, as well as a professor of clinical neurology at NYU's medical school. His primary interests in the field include neurological adaptation, memory and consciousness, and hallucinations. He has published thirteen books to date, several of which have become bestsellers, including Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, and Musicophilia. His works are non-fiction books that embody his passion for neurology, touching upon extraordinary topics within the science that he has witnessed throughout his over forty-year career. Musicophilia was my first experience with Sacks' writing, and I found it to be an extraordinary piece of work that drew me in. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain is written as a collection of short stories about individuals who have been impacted by music in peculiar and often life-changing ways. The very diverse and extraordinary cases presented in Musicophilia all employ music as either a source of misery or a source of relief. "Musicophilia" literally translates to "love of music," with the Greek suffix philia meaning "love." Although the title is appropriate for a portion of the cases presented in the book, there are quite a few cases in the book where the patient is tortured by music. Each of these cases is unique, and presented in a straightforward manner that anyone without a science background can easily understand. The book is divided into four parts, with different underlying themes. Musicophilia certainly sheds light on the ways in which music can have an exceedingly powerful effect, both in a positive, and a negative way. The first part of Musicophilia addresses topics such as musicogenic epilepsy, musical hallucinations, and sudden onsets of musicophilia. The book opens with the tale of Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon, who was struck by lightning in a telephone booth during a thunderstorm. Upon being struck, he is thrown backwards, and has an out-of-body experience, where he sees everything that was happening to him as an outsider. He feels as if he is floating, and can "see" people crowding around his unconscious body. He "sees" the woman that had been behind him at the telephone booth, giving him CPR, and then suddenly he feels pain from the burns that the lightning strike had given him, and he knew he was "back in his body". After the incident, he is examined neurologically, and aside from the fact that his memory is not quite as sharp, all appears to be well with him, and he returns to work shortly thereafter. Suddenly, a few weeks later, over the course of a few days, he begins to develop an insatiable craving for piano music. He buys several recordings of piano music, and develops the desire to play them. He begins hearing music in his head, and teaches himself how to play the piano. He becomes "possessed" by his desire to play the piano, and starts waking up at 4 AM every day, and playing until he has to go to work. He continues to play all evening after coming home from work, and even begins composing his own music. The story of Cicoria is a strong opening to Musicophilia, exemplifying the powerful effect music can have on an individual. Oliver Sacks touches upon several equally fascinating topics in Musicophilia. Musicogenic epilepsy is a condition in which seizures are induced by certain types of music, or sometimes just by a particular note. Patients who suffer from this particularly debilitating condition often live in fear of hearing music or loud noises (understandably so). The condition can be unpredictable, and something such as the blare of an ambulance driving by can trigger an epileptic seizure. Another debilitating condition that is covered in the first part of this book is the topic of musical hallucinations. Musical hallucinations are spontaneously induced within the auditory part of the brain. Often, this occurs in patients who are partially deaf, or hard of hearing. In these cases, the auditory portion of the brain becomes less active, due to under stimulation. As a result, it can begin to generate its own signals, which can take on the form of musical hallucinations. One patient, Mrs. C., matches this description. She is hard of hearing, and begins to develop musical hallucinations. She is alarmed that she is going mad. One morning, she suddenly starts to hear loud clanging, and thinks there must be a fire truck on her street. When she looks outside, she discovers that the street is empty, and cannot determine a source for this dreadful noise. The noise is replaced by music after a period of time, and she hears music from her childhood in her head all day long. Dr. Sacks explains to her that her hallucinations are not psychotic, but rather have a physiological and neurological basis. He explains to her brain imaging reveals that cases of musical hallucinations stimulate the same parts of the brain as listening to music would - the frontal and temporal lobes, the cerebellum, and the basal ganglia. In the case of Mrs. C., as well as with other patients that suffer from musical hallucinations, Sacks mentions the use of the anti-epileptic drug Gabapentin, to try and treat the hallucinations. Mrs. C. reports that Gabapentin aggravates her condition further; in the case of a different patient, it helped for a period of two months, before the hallucinations began to worsen again. The second part of Musicophilia discusses musicality, and the diversity that exists among individuals in relation to this. Topics in this section include amusia, absolute pitch, synesthesia and music, and musical savants. It addresses how some people are more "musical" than others, whereas others suffer from amusia - a type of disorder in which the subject has difficulty processing pitch, and cannot recognize when they or someone else is singing off key. In contrast, other people have absolute pitch, and may find listening to a piece of music played in the wrong key extremely agitating. Sir Frederick Ouseley, who was a music professor at Oxford University, displayed his remarkable trait of perfect pitch from a very young age. He could make proclamations like "Papa blows his nose in G," or that the wind was whistling in D. In the chapter about synesthesia and music, Sacks discusses how some individuals associate certain colors or tastes to different musical keys. For example, Michael associated D major with the color blue. When hearing F minor, he saw an earthy ashy color. An unnamed professional musician discussed in the chapter experiences different tastes on her tongue in response to hearing specific music intervals; major second is bitter, and fourth tastes like grass. She even makes distinctions such as minor sixth tasting like cream, and major sixth tasting like low-fat cream. Part III of the book focuses on memory, movement, and music. This section of the book discusses the effects of music upon patients that suffer from more common ailments, such as Tourette's syndrome, Parkinson's, and amnesia. These patients employ music as a treatment to help them overcome problems that they face due to their illnesses. To them, certain types of music help treat their symptoms, and give them relief, even if only temporarily. A story that touched me personally was the case of Rosalie B., a post-encephalitic Parkinson's patient, who suffered from long periods of time during which she would remain completely paralyzed. However, playing music to her, or even upon her imagining music, would free her from the shackles of her disease, and her symptoms would completely disappear for a period of time. It is incredible to me that music can have such a therapeutic effect over a disease that has manifested itself so strongly in a person. The final section of Musicophilia considers the role of music in emotion and identity. After suffering a brain aneurysm, Harry S. is rendered completely emotionless and unmoved by events of life. He would read in the newspaper about tragedies and remain completely indifferent. The only thing that seemed to shake Harry from his incapability of feeling was when he sang. Sacks states that while singing, Harry displays all the emotions appropriate for the music. Sacks closes the book by discussing cases of dementia, and how music therapy can capture the attention of patients in deep states of dementia, who are otherwise incapable of maintaining attention on anything. However, upon playing music in their presence, they suddenly seem to have a new sense of attention and curiosity. Patients who have trouble remembering their own names can begin to sing along to a familiar tunes, giving their families and caretakers renewed hope. Overall, I thought Musicophilia was a fascinating book, and the style with which Oliver Sacks writes makes the book an even more captivating read - his voice and personality is not lost among the clinical nature of the subject matter, and because he has dealt with many of these patients personally, he is able to recount the patients' mental awareness, and feelings towards their ailments. Musicophilia demonstrates that each individual truly experiences music in a unique way. Sacks discusses a wide range of afflictions in this book - some of which can utilize music as treatment, and others for which music can have a debilitating effect. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2012 by na1123
    • Excellent reading for those interested.
The book is about the brain and how music interacts with the brain - and also how that interaction is perceived by the brain. Many descriptions of non-ordinary experiences of music, based on the author's many years of correspondence with other interested doctors and their patients - including the author's personal experience. Lots and lots and more lots of footnotes, some of which are more interesting that the subjects in the book - and also an extensive bibliography if you're interested in that sort of thing. Very detailed, but very readable. Good stuff, all in all. Highly recommended. Four stars only: the book and its' footnotes could be edited down by 1/3 without sacrificing anything. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2016 by Fred

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