Neurologist Oliver Sacks has chronicled the mysteries of the human brain for almost four decades. Word Count: 44. Sacks successfully shows that musicophilia is a crucial part of being human. Rohrer et al. One positive aspect is that, unlike other books in which neuroscience takes center stage with illustrative case examples, Sacks is able to bring a human face to the sometimes arcane neurobiology of music. A man was struck by lightning after making the unfortunate decision to attempt a phone call in a public booth during a storm. Patients who are diagnosed with musicophilia report a sudden, abnormal craving for music and/or increased interest and responsiveness to musical sound. Recent advances in molecular biology have greatly furthered our understanding of the brain bases for the development of FTLD: in particular, there is the promise of predicting specific molecular substrates from characteristic clinico-anatomical profiles, due to targeted destruction of specific large-scale brain networks by abnormal molecules (Seeley et al., 2009; Rohrer et al., 2011; Warren et al., 2012). Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Normalization, segmentation, modulation, and smoothing of gray and white matter images were performed using default parameter settings. "Musicophilia" is disappointing in some respects, compared to some of his 11 other books. Book Tour is a Web feature and . 29, 467477. A customized explicit brain mask was applied based on specific consensus voxel threshold intensity criterion including all voxels with intensity >0.1 in >70% of subjects. doi:10.1212/WNL.0b013e31821103e6, Groussard, M., La Joie, R., Rauchs, G., Landeau, B., Chtelat, G., Viader, F., et al. Z scores are coded on the color bar (below right). Why music suddenly gains such a high degree of emotional value for musicophilics is not a question that is resolved by this research. This version has additional footage, including fMRI images of Dr. Sacks's brain as he listens to music. 80, 808809. Indeed, many of the people that the reader meets through Sackss stories have inspiring tales of the power of music to ameliorate suffering and to help overcome disabilities. doi:10.1002/hbm.20180, Martens, M. A., Reutens, D. C., and Wilson, S. J. Summary of patient demographic, clinical, and neuropsychological characteristics. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. (2011). 47, 308310. J. Neurol. Interestingly, this moving chapter is almost devoid of any connections with neurobiology. Neuron 62, 4252. Huron, D. B. Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia, acknowledges the unconscious effects of music as our body tends to join in the rhythmic motions involuntarily. In several cases, musicophilia was accompanied by a change in musical preferences (for example, from classical or jazz to pop or church music). Robbins classifies the Music Child as the inner self in every child that evokes a healthy musical response. Citing the German Romantic writer NovalisEvery disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solutionin the third and fourth parts of this book Sacks highlights the ways that music can become an effective therapeutic intervention. Neuroscience is a field that is well suited to make significant new contributions toward addressing these central questions about music and the human mind. Sacks tells of several cases that show how music can provoke seizures, a condition called musicogenic epilepsy. However, as a clinical phenomenon this unusual symptom has seldom been studied and the brain mechanisms that produce it remain largely undefined. I would love to know more about this area myself as with all researchers I get fascinated by topics but I have to be careful not to try to run too many projects at once. Kramer went on to say, "What makes Musicophilia cohere is Sacks himself. Morphometry of the amusic brain: a two-site study. Each week, the quality of life, functioning ability and level of depression/anxiety were assessed. =NG 7. mint 8 . Even with the loss of language, music becomes the vehicle for expression, feeling, and interaction. Neuronal correlates of perception, imagery, and memory for familiar tunes. One of the most affecting chapters addresses music and emotion. Abnormally enhanced appreciation of music or musicophilia, reflected in increased listening to music, craving for music, and/or willingness to listen to music even at the expense of other daily life activities, may rarely signal brain disease: examples include neurodevelopmental disorders such as Williams' syndrome (Martens et al., 2010), head trauma (Sacks, 2007), stroke (Jacome, 1984), temporal lobe epilepsy on anticonvulsant therapy (Rohrer et al., 2006), and focal degenerations particularly involving the temporal lobes (Boeve and Geda, 2001; Hailstone et al., 2009). He is also the ideal guide to the territory he covers. The last date is today's Musicophilia certainly sheds light on the ways in which music can have an exceedingly powerful effect, both in a positive, and a negative way. However, the musicophilic subgroup showed significantly increased regional gray matter volume relative to the non-musicophilic group in left posterior hippocampus (p < 0.05) after small volume correction over the anterior temporal lobe volume of interest (Figure 1; Table 2). He is the book's moral argument. Two of the chapters in this section focus on problems stemming from the auditory sensory function. Good question. However, there were no differing effects between live versus recorded music and between structured music therapy groups versus passive listening. coin 3000 =F 2. With that in mind, Sacks examines human's musical inclination through the lens of musical therapy and treatment, as a fair number of neurological injuries and diseases have been documented to be successfully treated with music. For the purposes of this study, patients were classified as exhibiting or not exhibiting musicophilia as defined above (musicophilic/non-musicophilic), based chiefly on retrospective review of data obtained from a research questionnaire administered to care-givers detailing patients' behavioral symptoms, including altered musical listening habits, since the onset of the clinical syndrome. Kramer concluded his review by writing, "Sacks is, in short, the ideal exponent of the view that responsiveness to music is intrinsic to our makeup. 24, 542549. It can immediately and dramatically bring patients out of an inner world to which they have retreated or calm patients who are excessively agitated. This presentation has advantages and disadvantages. Individuals who have acquired musical hallucinations as a result of deafness or seizures . Neuropsychologia 48, 26022609. It will be important to assess musicophilia in relation to abnormal extra-musical behaviors associated with FTLD. This work was also funded by the Wellcome Trust and by the UK Medical Research Council. U.S.A. 98, 1181811823. However, the salience of musicophilia (for example, the amount of time spent listening to music each day or the intensity and intrusiveness of music-seeking behaviors) varied widely among individual patients who exhibited the phenomenon. He illustrates I n Musicophilia, the eminent neurol- ogist Dr Oliver Sacks explores the important role that music plays in our the neuroanatomic substrate of vari- ous musical symptoms, such as musi- cal auras, musical hallucinations, and lives and in the lives of our patients. Kirkus Reviews 75, no. Musicophilia, or abnormal craving for music, is a poorly understood phenomenon that has been associated in particular with focal degeneration of the temporal lobes. Not as far as I can tell. Comparing subgroups of patients with FTLD that were well matched for other clinical and neuropsychological characteristics, development of musicophilia was specifically associated with relative preservation of gray matter in posterior hippocampus and (less robustly) a distributed network of additional areas including parahippocampal, temporo-parietal, anterior cingulate, and prefrontal cortices; and with atrophy of gray matter in posterior parietal and orbitofrontal cortices. Sacks discusses how blindness can affect the perception of music and musical notes, and he also writes that absolute pitch is much more common in blind musicians than it is in sighted musicians. Based on the 2008 BBC documentary by Alan Yentob and Louise Lockwood. Classification of primary progressive aphasia and its variants. 1252, 318324. Stephen Poole states that "Musicophilia is more about Continue reading The symptoms and . 11 Articles, This article is part of the Research Topic, Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK. The first of many tales within the book Musicophilia contains one of the most compelling patient cases of this condition. Synesthesia refers to a true mixing of the senses. Ann. (2009) described the case of a musically untrained 56 year old woman with SD who became intensely interested in music, playing, and singing along to a small repertoire of recorded pop songs; she also sang along with advertising jingles on the television. 56, 89114. In Musicophilia, Sacks explores the cognitive miracles of music. They also looked at the music listening interests of the two groups. His eyes are closed, his mouth open. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.08.024. Beyond this, Sacks points out that the reason for the effectiveness of music therapy is that musical perception, musical sensibility, musical emotion, and musical memory can survive long after other forms of memory have disappeared. Music can improve their quality of life and restore some sense of self. When music therapy was first introduced in tandem with other medical fields, it was mostly receptive and patients listened to live solo performances or pre-recorded songs. Mithen, S. J. I was wondering if this is a possible type if musicophilia. Music is a cultural universal of human societies and the ability to appreciate music is widely prized. Brain Cogn. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain- 9781400040810, hardcover, Sacks, new at the best online prices at eBay! Examples include musical savants and blindness. The rhythmic and melodic attributes of music establish an internal sense of expectation and resolution which may carry its own cognitive reward (Meyer, 1956; Huron, 2006). Each part has between six and eight chapters, each of which is in turn dedicated to a particular case study (or several related case studies) that fit the overarching theme of the section. In recent years, the fields of neuroscience and neurobiology have expanded greatly. Parts three and four are titled Memory, Movement, and Music and Emotions, Identity, and Music respectively. 2008 eNotes.com Using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of patients' MR brain images, we compared quantitatively the regional brain atrophy patterns of those who did with those who did not exhibit musicophilia. 8. Some cases were ascertained by retrospective review of clinical care-giver interviews. The title of Oliver Sackss book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain addresses this very issue. If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original Sacks cites the case of the nineteenth century music critic Nikonov, who, after his first major seizure at a performance of an opera, became so sensitive to music that he developed a phobia of music and had to give up his profession. By the term "musicophilia" he means that music "lies so deep in human nature that one must think of it as innate." However, the question about music has always concerned how we apprehend music.. The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body. 2023 . Most of the documented studies for children have shown a positive effect in promoting self-actualization and developing receptive, cognitive, and expressive capabilities. However, patients rated the program helpful and potentially beneficial. The right kind of music, usually legato with a clear rhythm, can help patients with Parkinsonian symptoms entrain their movement, particularly walking, with the steady rhythm of the music. He points the way toward a greater neurological understanding of how and why music is such an integral part of the human experience and why it can be so devastating to an individual when the facility for music goes awry. Persian Lydia =T 6. Sacks uses many research summaries and case histories to discuss this brain and behavioral condition that he sees as a problem to be . From 2008-2012, the Department of Oncology/ Hematology of the University Medical Center in Hamburg-Eppendorf orchestrated a randomized pilot study to determine if music therapy helped patients cope with pain and reduce chemotherapy side effects. If you go to any search engine and type in musicophilia then you will more than likely be directed to the excellent book of that title by Oliver Sacks. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. The second date is today's (2001). from pop to jazz. This fact might explain why there is relatively little literature on musicophilia and, consequently, why the phenomenon is poorly understood. For some people, the amusia has to do with tone deafness and lack of apprehension of melody, sequences of notes, or pitch. Music reliably evokes strong physiological as well as cognitive emotional responses (Khalfa et al., 2002; Baltes et al., 2011) and these responses have been linked to a distributed cortico-subcortical brain network that mediates biological drives and rewards and the evaluation of emotional and social signals more generally (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Peretz and Zatorre, 2005; Omar et al., 2011). 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