Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain

“Musicophilia – Tales of Music and the Brain” is a nonfiction book written by Oliver Sacks who is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. The basis of his book is examplified in the human species as a universal love and appreciation for music. This is a quality limited to the human species and not found in other primates. Musicophilia show itself in infancy and is a quality found in every human culture. He believes that musicophilia goes back to the beginning of our species. Whereas bird songs are fixed in its structure and never seem to vary, it must be hardwired in the avaian brain as there never is any improvisation and seems to be more of a mating phenomenon.

There are several scattered networks in the human brain and no one single music center. Every human has the ability to perceive tones, rhythyms, harmony pitch and timbre. We integrate all of these using many different parts of our brains. Most of this action is mainly unconscious but to this is added intense and profound emotional action to the music. Listening to music is not only emotional but is also muscular as we use our muscles to tap rhythms and to dance. We seem to have a great tenacity for musical memory as what was heard in our early years is retained for a lifetime.

However, this wonderful brain machinery is vulnerable to distortions, excesses and breakdowns. This can occur in a widespread range of cortical problems including Parkinsonism, Alzheimer’s, strokes, autism, and other forms of dementia. One example of a debilitating syndrome involving music is musicogenic epilepsy. In these individuals, a certain melody or pitch or tone may trigger a site in the temporal lobe resulting in a seizure. These individuals learn to stay away from any event involving music.

People woth absdolute pitch [ Mozart is an example] have been shown through MRI studies to have an exaggerated asymetry between the volumes of the right and left temporale planums which are structures in the brain important for the perception of speech and music. On the other hand, individuals with imperfect ptich usually will have had damage to the cochlea in the inner ear.

Musical savants are individuals whos have suffered brain damage that enhance their musical abilities. Some of these individuals, though they may be intellectually and physically limited, may have a reportoire of a thousand operas that they can sing or hundreds of symphonies that they can play. It seems that the brain damage that they have suffered has allowed the right side of the brain to become enhanced and bring out these musical abilities.

In synethesites one sensory experience may instantly and automatically provoke another. One of these individuals may perceive days of the weeks as having their own color. Others may correlate odors with color. In others a tone such as a C may invoke the color red. Some sysethesites when listening to a symphony may see an array of colors.

Th emotional response to music is widespread and is probably not only cortical but also subcortical so that even in diffuse cortical disease such as Alzheimer’s music can still be enjoyed. One does not have to have formal education to enjoy music. Music is deeply human as we spend our days tapping our feet, humming, singing an old song and even weeping over the emotion that music can evoke in us.

Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain