Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Musicophilia is an exploration of the power of music to heal, to encourage and support in adaptation, and to inspire resilience in the most challenging of circumstances. Many of Oliver Sacks’s patients and correspondents are musicians compelled to fight for their talents and abilities because of a neurological condition. One man named Jacob, who was slowly losing the ability to hear higher octaves, adapted by learning to compose in lower octaves and then transpose them. He noted, “You work with the ears you have, not the ears you want” (147). Another neurologist named Dr. Jorgensen trained himself to perceive stereo music with one ear by using visual cues and the memory of how it sounded; Sacks referred to this as a “reconstruction of function” (157).

Musical memory is both procedural and emotional, and these types of memory tend to be stronger and outlast other forms. They are, seemingly, among the most important aspects of being human. Thus, when a person’s neurology has left them feeling as though their humanity is slipping away, either as the result of memory loss, debilitating seizures, or otherwise, music brings them back to themselves and to their humanity. The fixed action patterns which are learned when one plays music become imprinted in the motor cortex and remain there, and although many of these patients will forget about music when it is not present, they only need to sit in front of a piano to begin playing as they once did.

Musical ability can also come later in life as a compensatory response to brain damage, blindness, and other conditions. This “cortical plasticity” (242) is indicative of the adaptability of the brain. Sacks explains that, in particular with damage to the left hemisphere, the now-less inhibited right hemisphere becomes more active. This can lead to talents that were previously absent:

[T]he right hemisphere, which in normal circumstances has only the most rudimentary linguistic capacities, can be turned into a reasonably efficient linguistic organ with less than three months of training—and that music is the key to this transformation (242).

For people with aphasia, who have lost the ability to speak after a seizure or stroke, music can help them find their voice again. Similarly, Parkinson’s disease affects the perception of flow of movement, but can also affect flow of speech, thought, and feeling, and music seems to help people with Parkinson’s find control and rhythm again. It has a similar effect on people with Tourette’s, many of whom find their tics controlled while listening to music. Sacks personally lost the ability to walk with rhythm after a leg injury and found that the predictable rhythm of music helped him find his own internal rhythm again. People like Clive Wearing and Louis, who could not remember their past, were able to remember music, and to sing, play, and enjoy it as they always had. Sacks is perhaps most deeply moved by music’s effects on people with progressive memory loss from dementia and related conditions: As they slowly slip away, music provides them joy and induces memories long forgotten:

I had read Nietzsche’s notes on physiology and art as a student, many years before, but his concise and brilliant formulations in The Will to Power came alive for me only when I came to Beth Abraham (Hospital) and saw the extraordinary powers of music with our post-encephalitic patients—its power to ‘awaken’ them at every level: to alertness when they were lethargic, to normal movements when they were frozen, and, most uncannily, to vivid emotions and memories, fantasies, whole identities which were, for the most part, unavailable to them (283).

This is also true for those with dementia and Alzheimer’s, who find that music brings them joy and solace where they otherwise cannot find it.