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Tales of Music and the Brain
Knopf
October 2007
On Sale: October 16, 2007
400 pages
ISBN: 1400040817
EAN: 9781400040810
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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’s compassionate, compelling tales 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 forty-two, 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 replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire
nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and
day. Yet far more frequently, 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 irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in
Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.
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