Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 23, 2008 - Psychology - 448 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition.

“Powerful and compassionate. . . . A book that not only contributes to our understanding of the elusive magic of music but also illuminates the strange workings, and misfirings, of the human mind.” —The New York Times


In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music.

Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable.
 

Contents

Sudden Musicophilia
3
Musical Seizures
19
Musicogenic Epilepsy
24
Imagery and Imagination
32
s Brainworms Sticky Music and Catchy Tunes
44
Musical Hallucinations
54
A Range of Musicality
94
A Range of Musicality
95
Aphasia and Music Therapy
232
Dyskinesia and Cantillation
243
Rhythm and Movement
254
Parkinsons Disease and Music Therapy
270
The Case of the OneArmed Pianist
284
Musical Dreams
303
Seduction and Indifference
312
Music Madness and Melancholia
324

Amusia and Dysharmonia
105
Absolute Pitch
129
Cochlear Amusia
140
Why We Have Two Ears
152
Musical Savants
162
Music and Blindness
171
Synesthesia and Music
177
Music and Amnesia
201
Music and Emotion
333
Music and the Temporal Lobes
339
Williams Syndrome
353
Dementia and Music Therapy
371
Acknowledgments
387
Index 411
410
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About the author (2008)

Oliver Sacks was a physician, writer, and professor of neurology. Born in London in 1933, he moved to New York City in 1965, where he launched his medical career and began writing case studies of his patients. Called the “poet laureate of medicine” by The New York Times, Sacks is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Awakenings, which inspired an Oscar-nominated film and a play by Harold Pinter. He was the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2008 for services to medicine. He died in 2015.


www.oliversacks.com

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