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Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.11
EAN: 9781400040810
Edition: 1
ISBN: 1400040817
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: October 16, 2007
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: October 16, 2007
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Review:
Amazon Best of the Month, December 2007: Legendary R&B icon Ray Charles claimed that he was "born with music inside me," and neurologist Oliver Sacks believes Ray may have been right. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain examines the extreme effects of music on the human brain and how lives can be utterly transformed by the simplest of harmonies. With clinical studies covering the tragic (individuals afflicted by an inability to connect with any melody) and triumphant (Alzheimer's patients who find order and comfort through music), Sacks provides an erudite look at the notion that humans are truly a "musical species." --Dave Callanan
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Perfect mixture of science and poetry...
This is exactly what a book written in the early part of the twenty-first century about the brain should be: a hodgepodge of anecdotal musings couched in good science without being subjugated by that science. There's much work to be done before anybody even reasonably approximates a complete theory of mind, and this is the premise of Sacks's casual, even poetic storytelling that matches his decades of neurological acumen with a refreshing capacity to deconstruct case studies with the simple elegance ... Read More
Rating:  - Minds making music
By now, it's a given that an Oliver Sacks' book is worth your time and close attention. His particular talent lies in making the science interesting without becoming a "pop-science" writer. This is not an easy achievement, but Sacks manages it with facility. He can explain the science in terms of case studies - many of which have claimed his medical attention. He does this while mixing in experiences of his own and some personal reflections which are anything but intrusions. While some of his books ... Read More
Rating: - New Understandings
This book opens up your mind to new ideas on the value and processing of music. An amazing, insightful creation!
Rating:  - Sour notes
I loved Oliver Sacks's other books -- "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" and Anthropologist on Mars." Long after reading them, I quote stories from them, even after forgetting their origin. But "Musicophila" is a drag
Though Sacks seems to follow his trademark formula -- using extraordinary tales of people with mental disabilities and injuries to shed light on normality -- it falls flat here. We learn of people with irksome musical hallucinations, folks whose musicality becomes all-encompassing ... Read More
Rating: - Sachsophonia
The great Oliver Sachs turns his attention to neurological disturbances related to the hearing of Music. In the course of it he shows that what I suspect most of us take for granted, that we all share a basic single way of 'hearing music' to be wrong. He shows that the listening to Music is an enormously complex neurological process involving different areas of the brain. And in chronicling a wide variety of disorders he shows not only how different areas of the Brain are involved but also how social elements may ... Read More
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