Musicophilia

I feel like a terrible person for having gone this long without talking about Oliver Sacks. He's an incredibly well-known physician, Professor of Clinical Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia. He's written several wonderful books about case histories of interesting patients he's had (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), victims of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic in the 1920s (Awakenings), and deaf studies (Seeing Voices), among others.

Anyway, in 2007, he published a book called Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. And this post is really nothing more than me shamelessly begging you to read this book, because I think it really is that good. As the title suggests, it's merely a collection of stories. He talks about a group of children with William's Syndrome who are especially attuned to music from birth; the phenomena of amusia; patients who have suffered strokes and are only able to convey emotion through music. The list goes on and on.

There's one story in particular, "Seduction and Indifference", that I think sums up very well the inspiration behind the book. The author states:

"The neuroscience of music, in particular, has concentrated almost exclusively on the neural mechanisms by which we perceive pitch, tonal intervals, melody, rhythm, and so on, and, until very recently, has paid little attention to the affective aspects of appreciating music. Yet music calls to both parts of our nature-- it is essentially emotional, as it is essentially intellectual."

He goes on to give examples of music-loving patients who had accidents of various kinds, and from that time forward, would show complete indifference towards music. In other words, they respond normally to everything *except* music. This can also go the other way. A patient can have an accident (an example is given of a man struck by lightning), and can suddenly feel an uncanny inspiration to play an instrument, where before there was no musical motivation.

"The fact that one may have not only a selective loss of musical emotion but an equally selective sudden musicophilia implies that the emotional response to music may have a very specific physiological basis of it's own, one which is distinct from that of emotional responsiveness in general."

In other words, the ability to enjoy or repulse music may actually be a separate, individual part of the brain. Personally, I find that fascinating. And so should you.