A music fan himself, noted neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks has written in this book about the effects that music has on the brain, and vice versa.
As well as being informative, this work has a great bedside manner. Oliver Sacks has a wonderful flair for relating the vicissitudes of human neurological quirks, his own as well as those of his patients.
Sacks catalogues a rich variety of neurological irregularities, both congenital and acquired. Ever had a song stuck in your head? It's very common, and humans share a neurological propensity for this to happen. Che Guevara was rhythm deaf, and danced a mamba while the orchestra played a fandango.
Perfect pitch is an extremely rare gift. Composer Rachel Y was born with it, but after suffering a blow to her head in a car accident, she lost it in an instant and had to learn to live without it. A mentally retarded patient, Martin, had a phonographic memory. He retained all the music he read. By the age of sixty, he knew two thousand operas, the Messiah, all of Bach's Cantatas and more.
Left-hemisphere dominance is usual, but sometimes the left side of the brain may be damaged in utero or in infancy. When a patient suffers from intractable epilepsy, the drastic surgical measure of left hemispherectomy may be carried out, leaving the patient with only one hemisphere. This can cause the brain to shift to right-hemisphere dominance. Such situations may be related to savant conditions, which can emerge not only in childhood, but later in life.
Absolute pitch, shared by many musicians, has a strange connection to blindness. About half of children born blind or blinded in babyhood have absolute pitch. Yet language learning demands the loss of absolute pitch.The exception is with tonal languages: those learning tonal languages retain and heighten their sense of absolute pitch.
The organ of Corti, though it lies deep within the head for protection, is still vulnerable to loud noises, as are the hair cells that form part of this delicate inner "instrument." Musicians, especially as they age, may be afflicted by a variety of kinds of hearing loss which affect them in quite different ways. Older piano tuners tend to tune the highest octaves too sharp, perhaps due to some encroaching "atrophy of the basilar membrane."
While learning about fascinating brain irregularities, the reader senses behind these tales the curiosity, compassion and intelligence of the great neurologist -- music lover and friend as well as doctor. As a companion on a journey of discovery of the astonishing connections between music and brain function, this reader couldn't have asked for a better guide.
Musicophilia was published in 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf.
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