Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition

**Revised and Expanded** 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. 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, __Musicophilia__ is Oliver Sacks' latest masterpiece. 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. ([source][1]) [1]: https://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/musicophilia/ These lush, rewarding reflections on a woman's passage into midlife are grounded in our intimacy with nature and mortality. Deborah Digges, now in her fifties, looks back in such poems as "Boat" to see younger mothers and their children, and ponders her own "brilliant, trivial unmooring." As she wanders from the garden to the barn and into the woods, she finds her moods mirrored in the calendar of the seasons, making lush music of the materials at hand and accepting the seismic changes in her life with an appreciation for the incidental scraps of beauty she chances upon.

Throughout these luminous poems–which touch movingly on the illness and loss of her husband–Digges marvels at the brio with which we fling ourselves daringly into the night:

See how the first dark takes the city in its arms
and carries it into what yesterday we called the future.

O, the dying are such acrobats.
Here you must take a boat from one day to the next,

or clutch the girders of the bridge, hand over hand.
But they are sailing like a pendulum between eternity and evening,

diving, recovering, balancing the air. With his trademark compassion and erudition, Oliver Sacks, whom The New York Times has called "the poet Laureate of medicine," explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people. Among them a surgeon who is struck by lightning and suddenly becomes obsessed with Chopin; 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. Dr. 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 who are deeply disoriented by Alzheimer's or schizophrenia. Music can be inspiring, moving us to the heights or depths of emotion - and it can also be our best medicine. In Musicophilia Oliver Sacks tells us why. (back cover) "Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. 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. Dr. 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 who are deeply disoriented by Alzheimer's or schizophrenia"-- Back cover Revised and Expanded 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. 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, Musicophilia is Oliver Sacks' latest masterpiece.

Accidental davening : dyskinesia and cantillation ; Come together : music and Tourette's Syndrome ; Keeping time : rhythm and movement ; Kinetic melody: Parkinson's disease and music therapy -- Phantom fingers: the case of the one-armed pianist ; Athletes of the small muscles : musician's dystonia -- Emotion, identity, and music. Awake and asleep : musical dreams ; Seduction and indifference ; Lamentations : music and depression ; The case of Harry S. : music and emotion ; Irrepressible : music and the temporal lobes ; A hypermusical species : Williams Syndrome ; Music and identity : dementia and music therapy