Musicophilia Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Musicophilia

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Zusammenfassung von Musicophilia

Name: Musicophilia
Rating: 4.3 (64 reviews)
Author: Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

Tales of Music and the Brain

4.3 (64 Bewertungen)

20 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks explores the wonders and mysteries of music as experienced by individuals with neurological disorders. From the therapeutic use of music to the fascinating ways the brain processes sound, this book shows the profound impact music can have on our lives.

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What’s in it for me? Discover the weird and wonderful world of the musical brain.

Since the dawn of humanity, music has brought people together: to sing and dance, to relax or to go wild. This common love for music – our musicophilia – creates a universal bond between all human beings.

Right?

Not quite.

In these blinks you’ll explore not only the wonders, but also the horrors that music can induce: how music can both cure immobility and bring back language to people who’ve lost the ability to speak, but also cause terrible hallucinations and epileptic seizures.

You’ll also learn about the people who see beautiful rainbow colors when they listen to music.

And finally, you’ll find out how to suddenly develop musical creativity. Simple: just get yourself struck by lightning.

Not everyone can comprehend, produce or even enjoy music.

Musicophilia, the propensity for producing and the desire to listen to music, exists in virtually every culture.

But this doesn’t mean that every single individual is occupied or preoccupied by music. In fact, some people don’t have musical abilities, while others are completely indifferent to music. This latter category of people have a condition called amusia, which means they lack certain kinds of musical abilities.

One kind of amusia is tone deafness, present in about five percent of the population. People who are tone deaf don’t realize if they hit the wrong notes while singing, and are also unable to recognize when others sing off-key.

Another kind of amusia is rhythm deafness, meaning the inability to follow the rhythm of a piece of music. One famously rhythm-deaf person was Che Guevara. It was said that when the orchestra played a tango, he would dance a mambo.

There are also many cultural forms of rhythm deafness, meaning the inability to follow musical rhythms from “foreign” cultures. Research shows that infants can detect all kinds of rhythmic variations, but by 12 months their range has already narrowed down to the ones they hear in their daily lives – the ones in their culture.

While those with gross tone or rhythm deafness can still enjoy music and dancing, people with amusia in its most absolute sense don’t even experience music as music. For such people, melodies simply don’t sound like music and might even acquire a disturbing character. Instead of hearing what we think of as music, a man with absolute amusia said he heard the sound of a screeching car!

There are also people who don’t have any problems perceiving music, but simply don’t enjoy it. Certain historical figures reported that they were indifferent to music. For example, in his autobiography, Darwin reveals that in his adult life he lost his feeling for music. And Freud once explained that he never listened to music voluntarily because he was incapable of deriving any pleasure from it.

Musical training results in noticeable physical changes to the brain.

Now that we’ve looked at people who seem to lack musical abilities, let’s turn our gaze to musicians. What distinguishes them from the rest?

Research shows that musicians’ brains are noticeably different from those of non-musicians. Using brain imaging, neuroscientists have made precise comparisons of the sizes of various parts of the brain in musicians and non-musicians. These differences are so noticeable that experienced anatomists can instantly recognize the brain of a professional musician, whereas they would find it difficult to identify the brain of a writer, a visual artist or a mathematician.

People with absolute pitch can tell the pitch of any note – but this is not always a good thing.

What pitch do you blow your nose in? To most people this seems like an absurd question. But people with absolute pitch can instantly recognize the pitch of any sound they hear – even you blowing your nose.

For instance, Sir Frederick Ouseley, a former professor of music at Oxford, could detect that the wind whistled in D, that thunder rumbled in G, and the clock struck in B minor. Amazingly, when his remarks were tested, they would always be correct, demonstrating that for people with absolute pitch, each tone is absolutely distinguished from all others by a unique and characteristic quality.

Musical abilities can be enhanced by blindness or a condition called synesthesia.

Have you heard any orange songs lately? What about green ones? For most people, these questions sound surreal, but for a select few they make total sense.

These people have a condition called synesthesia. Synesthesia is the activation of one sensory experience by the stimulation of another sensory experience: for example, seeing the color blue when hearing a G sharp. And in some cases, synesthesia can lead to extraordinary musical capabilities.

Extraordinary musical gifts can appear in people with intellectual disabilities.

It is a widespread belief that it takes a highly intelligent person to become musical – but this is far from always the case. Actually, musicality is the most common type of talent among savants – intellectually disabled people who show extraordinary abilities.

Take, for instance, Martin, an intellectually disabled man who developed a great passion for music as well as a phonographic memory, meaning that he could remember every piece of music he heard: he knew more than 2,000 operas, and could sing the melodies or play them on the piano from memory. The author tested him on his knowledge of operas, and realized that Martin not only remembered them perfectly, but also remembered the exact score for every instrument and singer. Furthermore, when he was played a piece he had never heard, he could repeat it almost flawlessly, and was even able to transpose it into different keys.

Music can ease movement disorders and even help people regain motion of their limbs.

Have you ever been out jogging and been pushed extra hard by the energizing effect of a song? In fact, this mobilizing effect is also used in a variety of medical domains.

For example, Tourette’s syndrome can sometimes be eased by music. Tourette’s syndrome is characterized by often explosive tics, like jerking, mimicking and even yelping. But playful jazz or rock has been found to help sufferers due to the genres’ freedom to improvise. For example, the professional jazz drummer David Aldridge used drumming to direct the unruly energy of his Tourette’s into an orderly flow.

Music therapy can help people with dementia and speech problems.

Even though it seems that the power of music has always been central to humanity, the concept of music therapy is relatively new.

In music therapy, patients compose, listen to and play music to accomplish individualized therapeutic goals. It arose in response to the return of damaged and traumatized soldiers from the Second World War. The first music therapists soon discovered that music could soothe both their physical and psychological misery.

Some people experience terrible seizures from hearing music.

If you really don’t like a particular piece of music, you probably just turn it off, or move out of its reach. But imagine reacting so strongly to certain songs that you have a seizure as soon as you hear it.

This can happen to some people who have epilepsy, a disorder involving convulsions and loss of consciousness, often in reaction to intense sensory input. But while most people know that epileptic seizures can be triggered by bright flashing lights, it’s less well known that some epileptic patients can also get seizures from music.

Hearing loss can lead to intrusive and distressing musical hallucinations.

You’ve probably experienced a catchy tune that sticks in your head for hours or days on end. But imagine what it would be like if these “earworms” had the quality of actual perception – as though you had real speakers playing in your head!

Many people actually do experience this kind of musical hallucination, which feels as though they have actual music playing internally. Most sufferers emphasize that the music seems at first to have an external origin, and it’s only when they can’t find an external source for it that they realize the music is being generated by their own brain. One of the author’s correspondents called his hallucinations his “intracranial jukebox” – the jukebox in his skull.

Some people become “possessed” by musical powers quite late in life.

Wouldn’t it be nice if out of nowhere you suddenly became blessed with musical super powers? You might want to be careful what you wish for: it has actually happened to a few, and some become so possessed by their musical ability that there’s no room in their life for anything else.

For example, after being hit in the face by lightning, Cicoria, a family man of 42 previously indifferent to music, became so obsessed with it that he scarcely had time for the rest of the world.

Final Summary

The key message in this book:

People’s sensitivity to music varies greatly: some people can tell the pitch of any note, while others completely lack musical ability or feeling. Brain disorders can change our experience of music, some inducing great musical passion, and others making the sound of music a horrifying experience. Music also has the power to heal a troubled mind, and even revive a motionless limb.

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Worum geht es in Musicophilia?

Musicophilia explores the enriching, healing and disturbing effects of music. It delves into fascinating case studies about disorders that are expressed, provoked and alleviated by music.

Bestes Zitat aus Musicophilia

The embedding of words, skills or sequences in melody and meter is uniquely human.

—Oliver Sacks

Wer Musicophilia lesen sollte

Anyone who loves listening to music
Anyone who wants to learn how music affects our brains
Anyone who wants to know how music can heal people

Über den Autor

Oliver Sacks is a British-American physician, writer and professor of clinical neurology at Columbia University. He is also the author of Awakenings, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film, and the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

Kategorien mit Musicophilia

Wissenschaft Gesellschaft & Kultur Psychologie

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