Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

by Oliver Sacks | Nonfiction |
ISBN: 9781400040810 Global Overview for this book
Registered by KimKerry of Prescott, Arizona USA on 2/6/2008
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3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by KimKerry from Prescott, Arizona USA on Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Congratulations on your Heart and Soul Challenge win!

Enjoy.

(I may have to get a copy for myself. This looks great!)

Journal Entry 2 by Secretariat from Carlsbad, California USA on Saturday, February 9, 2008
What a great prize! I'll have to let Lisa know that I've got this one. She's a big fan of Sacks. Thanks to Kim for a fun challenge and a great book.

Journal Entry 3 by Secretariat from Carlsbad, California USA on Saturday, October 11, 2008
This is a well written book about the neurological aspects of music. Only a couple of times did it get too clinical, but was otherwise at turns both fascinating and amazing. I learned about people to whom music is like fingernails on a blackboard; how perfect pitch may be as much a hindrance as a help; that there are such things as musical hallucinations; about those who get a tune or tunes stuck in their head for years or decades; of those with the total inability to discriminate between musical pieces, or even recognize them as music; the tragedy of amnesia; and so much more.

Thank you to KimKerry to gifted me with this book. I'll take it to tomorrow's meetup.

Journal Entry 4 by PokPok from Vista, California USA on Sunday, October 12, 2008
This one didn't even hit the table, when I grabbed it. Both MrPok and I are huge fans of Oliver Sacks; we've read all of his work. We were just mentioning this book the other day, that we needed to pick it up. thanks to KimKerry and Secretariat for sharing.

Pokpok

Journal Entry 5 by PokPok at Vista, California USA on Friday, July 3, 2020
8 stars: Very good.

From the back cover: Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something or remind us of our first date.It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.

Oliver Sacks' compassionate, compelling tals of people, struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people - from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of 42, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth; from people with "amusia" to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds - for everything but music.

Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong. Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replya, and how a suprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frquently, music goes right. Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson's disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer's or amnesia. Music is irresistable, huanting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.

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As someone with a fascination for neurology (I should have specialized in the area professionally), a love of Oliver Sacks' work and a lover of music, especially live performances, this book was right up my alley. I'm a bit surprised I waited so long (embarassingly long!!) to read it, but it certainly did not disappoint. I can't describe it any better than the intro did -- Sacks speaks to the layperson, and tells numerous real life tells from his practice, to explore the workings of music and musical comprehension in the brain. Recommended, and no additional science knowledge required.

Some quotes / sections I liked:

By the age of 7 he could reproduce long and elaborate pieces of music after a single hearing and constantly found himself "overwhelmed" by musical emotion. He said it was understood, practically from the start, that he would be a musician, and that he had little chance of doing anything else, because his musicality was all consuming. He would not, I think, have had it any other way but he sometimes felt his musicality controlled him, rather than the other way around. Musical ability, as with mathematics, can be especially precocious and may determine one's life from a very early age.

They observed there was a critical period for the development of absolute pitch, before the age of 8 or so. Roughly the same age at which children find it much more difficult to learn the phnomes of another language (and thus to speak a second language with a native accent).

He doesn't strongly weigh in on the question if music or language evolved first, only devoting two paragraphs to it. He ultimately concludes that it appears probable that musical rhythm evolved independently from speech. (Even then, he never says what he believes, as just present research of a few others. )

A number of my friends who are intensely sensitive to music can not have it on as background while they work; they must attend to the music completely or turn it off, for it is too powerful to allow them to focus on other mental activities [ raises hand!!!].

Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. ...And there is a deep and mysterious paradox here, for while such music makes one experience pain and grief more intensely, it brings solace and consolation at the same time.

"Together" is a crucial term, for a sense of community takes hold, and these patients who seemed incorrigibly isolated by their disease and dementia are able, at least for awhile , to recognize and bond with others.

Music does not have to be familiar to exert its emotional power. I have seen deeply demented patients weep or shiver as they listen to music they have never heard before, and I think that they can experience the entire range of feelings the rest of us can, and that dementia, at least at these times, is no bar to emotional depth. Once one has seen such responses, one knows that there is still a self to be called upon, even if music, and only music, can do the calling.

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