Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks (2011-09-02)

The human mind was created to perform in most amazing ways, even when what is considered major limitations. Oliver Sacks vivid descriptions of many of these remarkable experiences with music is a captivating read.

After I finished reading this book, I found the title of this book very meaningful. The full title of this book is Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. If you love music, you will get to love brain. If you love brain, you will get to love music. If you love both like I do, well, this is it.

Oliver Sacks is an author of several different best sellers. Surprisingly, he is also a physician and neuroscientist at Columbia University medical center. However, don't worry! As all other comments have mentioned below, you will find his literary style of writing make you comfortable in understanding science. He translates great volume of professional articles into story-telling and straightforward manner. He will not lose your interest in reading the book because he has got exciting stories on his patients he come across every day.

This book, Musicophilia, deals with everything that has to do with music and brain ranging from neurologic disorders such as aphasia to special stories such as person who falls in love with music after he got stroke by thunder. Largely these chapters are divided into four parts. The first and the second parts are focused on strange individuals who are haunted by music and people who are heavily affected by music either positively or negatively in daily life. In the third part, it talks about how music can affect your brain memory, movement, and disorders. In the last part, it talks about emotions, identity of self, and disorders related music and brain.

`Musicophilia enriched my scientific knowledge!'

The book helped me to expand vast knowledge on neuroscience in biomedical engineering elective course. During my neuroscience class, we learned various different aspects of brain ranging from the basic level brain and neural structures to the mechanisms of sensory and motor system. As I was reading Musicophilia, there were a lot of topics that goes along with what I learned in class, and Musicophila gave musical touch that enriched my knowledge about brain.

One of the interesting findings was the effect of music on brain development. The author explains how musicians have enlarged increased volumes of gray matter in motor cortex, auditory cortex, cerebellum, and corpus callosum. (The corpus callosum is a thick band of nerve fibers that divides the cerebrum into left and right hemispheres, and this part of brain has critical role in communicating information in between those two hemispheres.)

There is one whole chapter devoted to imagery and imagination of music. In this chapter, author talks about this studies carried out by Robert Zatorre, and this studies show that imagining music can activate the auditory cortex as strongly as listening to it. Also, if you imagine playing musical instrument, it stimulates not only motor cortex, but also auditory cortex. This is heavily related to the concept that I learned during neuroscience class, of comparison between efference copy and expectation.
In my neuroscience class, during visual system lecture, I learned this concept of perceptual fill in of blank spots. This is visual illusionary effect revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. Oliver Sacks discusses this illusionary effect on auditory system with 1960s experiments on `white Christmas effect.' When universally known Bing Crosby version of this song was played, some subjects heard it when the volume was turned down to near zero. Author calls this effect "fill in" by involuntary musical imagery, and he goes on and explains this effect in parallel with brain structure. There was greater activation or lighting up in auditory association areas. These two illusions in two different systems suggest that your senses heavily rely on your brain at the same as your sensory inputs.

`Musicophilia's and music therapy'

As a biomedical engineer, I had biggest compassion toward study cases on patients with neurologic dysfunction and his therapeutic approach to those people among the many different musical love stories he talks about.

I have a good friend mine from my high school, and her dad has gone through tough times for several years for having a rare illness that is similar to Parkinson's disease. Making the matter worse for my friend, this illness is known to be a hereditary disease. These days, one of the most common and effective treatments of Parkinson's disease is done through L-dopa, which is precursor of dopamine that can get through your blood brain barrier. Author talks about another great cure for Parkinson's disease that existed since 1960s, and effectiveness of them is fully capable exceeding that of L-dopa. As you expected, it is music and dance. Parkinson's disease patient's most distinctive symptom is unnatural flow of movement, and there movements are either most of time frozen or excessively accelerated. However, if you observe more carefully, they also have problem in flow of perception, thoughts, and even feelings. Author mentions that their fundamental problem is their inability to initiate movements spontaneously, and this disease comes from dysfunction on your subcortical machinery, especially basal ganglia, that control automatic enaction and succession of movements. Something is preventing or inhibiting proper activation of these parts, and music comes into play right here. Music, outside stimulus, can activate this subcortical machinery, and, as Oliver Sacks put, patients dance out of frame. Author shows many different stories and studies where patients jump out of frame through activities like playing piano and dancing Argentino Tango. He emphasizes that one of the most critical element in this therapy for Parkinson's disease is a rhythm. However, this treatment is does not have long lasting effects more than few minutes, but studies are still going on to improve this.

Another interesting therapeutic approach was done on verbal dysfunction such as aphasia, impairment of language ability. This involves not only forgotten vocabularies and grammars, but also lost feeling of rhythms and inflection of speech. Here comes a stunning part. Whenever, author meets his aphasia patients, he sings them "Happy Birthday" to them, and all of their patients are capable of join in and sing the tunes, and half of them even get those words write. Question is, as author puts, "can language embedded in unconscious automatism be `released' for conscious, propositional use?" Answer is yes, and author shows various study cases on this. Most effective they were melodic intonation therapy, and some of these patients, at six weeks through this intense therapy, and he was capable of carrying on short, meaningful conversations. If you question how this is capable, author goes on and explains possible reasons through three different studies from 1970s, 1990s, and recent work. Most of these studies are done through imaging techniques looking at which brains parts are activated under certain circumstances. He talks about possible candidate of Broca's area, `right Broca's area(fake)', fronto-temporal network in right hemisphere, and lastly cortical plasticity to explain how music therapy works for patients with verbal dysfunctions. If you curious how this actually works, I definitely recommend getting this book.

There is proverb saying, "do not judge your book by cover." If you ask me about my favorite part of the book, I would confidently say the cover of the book. It shows picture of author himself, Oliver Sacks, listening to music with `musicophilia(love of music)' in his face on the background color of orange, which gives a warm to overall imagery of this book cover. His words have warmth in it. He has great compassion about his patients. He actually cares about them so much that most of the cases and studies start with their real name and their brief life stories. This love will drag you into this book, `musicophilia,' and even greater one, music.

I truly fellt Dr Sacks captured a human and scholarly read in this book. Oftentimes people will write for the scholarly and subsequently bore the pants off of the human. When I type human I recognize we are all both but some writing uses phrases and verbage that the average would be perplexed past page 1. His concepts and stories enhanced that information creating a more human side to his works.

I am a pianist & a medical professional; this book seemed like the perfect pick. Sacks is a good author in the sense that he is thorough, clear and detailed. However, it got very redundant, patient case studies started to sound the same, and his points were repetitive (I even found myself flipping back to old chapters to make sure I wasn't crazy: was I re-reading the same thing over and over?) I also found it frustrating that Sacks would introduce concepts but never delve into the specific anatomy or reasoning behind the cause of certain musical phenomenons. Perhaps this is because we really don't know why these phenomenons happen. Either way, it got very boring. Also, as a musician, I already understand/appreciate the complexity of music and its effect on the brain/human experience. I was hoping Sacks' book would introduce new ideas or complexities between music and physiology but that did not happen for me, which was disappointing.

If you love how this neurobiologist thinks ("Awakenings", "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", "Hallucinations") You will just love this book.

Musicophilia...Love of music. He explains how our brains have evolved to love music...and then goes on to explain why some of us LOVE jazz, classics or hip hop and rap.

His books are NOT easy reading. This is post-graduate med school stuff. But anyone can grasp the central tenets.

Enjoy this book!

I enjoyed this read immensely. Sacks has shown that responsiveness to music is essential to our makeup. This book is like no other book he has penned. He has opened himself up to show where he is most alive.

I enjoy reading Oliver Sacks on any subject; his enthusiasm is inspiring. The role of music in our lives is explored here via the extraordinary reactions of some people who have neurological problems of one kind or another. The response to music in people who seem totally out of touch with any other mode of communication is a pointer that deserves a lot of further study and general interest. I am enticed enough to exlore further via some of the sources he recommends, including "Music and the Mind"

After reading this books, you feel like wanting to be a neurologist and apply to work with Sacks. He is brillant and the book is a delight to read - as are his other books. I particularly enjoyed "The Anthropologist of Mars". The main theme about the book is music, but don't be fooled, although music is what connects all stories, it is mainly a book about the brain. Even if you are not a big music fan (as I am not) but enjoy learning about the mechanisms of the brain - this is very exciting - specially because it helped me to explain why I am not into music and why different people are touched in different ways by music. I understood why I found some songs interesting and others completely boring, for example.

Oliver Sacks shows how music can affect one's brain and how the brain can affect how one hears music because of accidents, illness and even how one is born.

His books are always fascinating and this one is no expection.

Great somewhat clinical read. I purchased several books from Oliver Sacks, this was the first I read. Well written, exposing interesting cases about a variety effects of music (both good and bad) can have on the human brain. Look forward to reading more from this doctor.

I have truly enjoyed reading this book. It discusses the complexities of the human brain in an enjoyable way - not too technical for those without a medical background but not "dumbed down" either. I highly recommend this one.

Oliver Sacks is an excellent writer, and this book definitely seems to be one of his better works. I am pleased to have bought it, and am extremely excited to read it!
A good book for people who are into music, who have music as a part of their career in some way, shape, or form, and in general interested in the powers of the brain and mind.
Thanks!!

Great somewhat clinical read. I purchased several books from Oliver Sacks, this was the first I read. Well written, exposing interesting cases about a variety effects of music (both good and bad) can have on the human brain. Look forward to reading more from this doctor.

I have truly enjoyed reading this book. It discusses the complexities of the human brain in an enjoyable way - not too technical for those without a medical background but not "dumbed down" either. I highly recommend this one.

Oliver Sacks is an excellent writer, and this book definitely seems to be one of his better works. I am pleased to have bought it, and am extremely excited to read it!
A good book for people who are into music, who have music as a part of their career in some way, shape, or form, and in general interested in the powers of the brain and mind.
Thanks!!

If you're educated in music and medicine this book may be interesting to you. Otherwise it's filled with anecdotal experiences of many practitioners that may or may not aid in the treatment of neurological disease.

Dr. Sacks does a great job at helping us understand how our brain reacts to music. He identifies how important music is to all of us, though each of us interprets it differently. Intelligent reading!

My sister recommended this book to me. She and I are both musicians, she as a baritone horn and piano player and I as a dance and jazz band sax/clarinet/vibes player. Dr. Sacks is a very informative and amusing writer with a wealth of exprience.

Very in-depth, intriguing, and fulfilling read on the brains organization of musical abilities and the like. Includes anomalies on those intangible aspects of music that seem to evade scientific reductionism. Very cool!!

After watching the movie, Alive Inside, and spending the last year getting the Music and Memory Program up and running in my community, reading this book was a true joy. Oliver Sacks sheds light on the many effects of music on the brain and how people hear music in different ways. Sacks was wonderful in the Alive Inside movie and now I find his books even more informative.

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks is one of the most interesting and engaging books I've read in a long time. As a musician, I am fascinated at the interaction of neurology and music. Be prepared for thinking about music in new ways, and for learning about the intricate and delicate aspects of our brains that make it possible for us to even hear music as music (rather than noise), let alone enjoy it.

This is a fascinating read from the very first page. Sacks delves into the brain's reaction to trauma and the subsequent musicality that follows. Includes amazing stories of individual lives changed forever by the music they hear in their heads.