8min chapter

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Oliver Sacks Searched The Brain For The Origins Of Music

Science Friday

CHAPTER

The Neuroscience of Music and Emotion

This chapter examines the interplay between music and neurological conditions, showcasing how different cognitive states influence musical perception and emotional response. It highlights therapeutic applications of music for disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, while exploring intriguing phenomena such as synesthesia and the evolutionary role of music in human development.

00:00
Speaker 3
Well, I come from a real musical family. I'm actually related to Felix Mendelssohn. And music is so much part of my life. I'm a vocalist. And my step-grandson cannot stand music in any form. It just freaks him out completely. And I was wondering if you've ever heard anything like this. I mean, the kid's seven years old, and he cannot stand any kind of music.
Speaker 1
He writes, you write about that in your book. Well, not enough. You know, quite a lot of people have been telling me about musicophobia and a hatred of music. And I think I probably should have written more. I wonder what goes on in a seven-year Is he averse to all music?
Speaker 3
Yes, all music. He can't stand it. I'm wondering if it's a function of some form of autism.
Speaker 1
Does he recognize the music he dislikes?
Speaker 3
He just doesn't like any kind of music at all. If there's any kind of music at all, he can't stand it.
Speaker 1
Okay. Books, there are some people with a rare disorder called amusia, and these people don't have pitch discrimination. They can't hear tones and semitones. They don't really hear music as such. They may just hear it as noise. One of my patients with this said it's like pots and pans being thrown around in the kitchen, and this would certainly make one hate music. But I mean, one needs to sort out what's going on with your boy. Could he grow out of it? Well, I hope he can grow out of it or be helped out of it because there's a huge source of joy and one would say innocent joy in music.
Speaker 2
Wait, can a mother like Janet do anything? Take her son?
Speaker 1
Well, I think she needs to sort of find out what's happening and whether the audiologist will do this or the psychiatrist or the neurologist.
Speaker 2
Good luck, Janet. Good
Speaker 1
luck. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2
Let's talk about some of the other kinds of patients. You've had a patient with extraordinary talent for music, but severe deficits in other cognitive activities.
Speaker 1
One sometimes see this in people with Williams syndrome. This is a rare congenital syndrome where people are often precocious and gifted in language and music, and they're very sociable, but with low IQs. They can't usually function independently. But people with Williams syndrome, all of them, 100% of them, are enraptured by music. They're almost helplessly delighted or anguished or overwhelmed by it. A lot of them are musically talented, but all of them are enraptured. But the other thing is one can have a musical savant. These are usually people who have autism, and interestingly, at least half of the musical servants are also blind. And blindness disposes to musicality as well.
Speaker 2
Last time you were on our program a couple of years ago, we got into music therapy. And that, to coin a phrase, really struck a chord in a lot of our listeners. And I'm struck by the wide range of patients, people with an array of neurological conditions who can, as you talk about in your book, be reached by music. Well,
Speaker 1
as I say, I first saw this with the Parkinsonian people who really have this motor problem. And for them, it's the rhythm which is important. The music doesn't have to be familiar or affect them in other ways. For people with Alzheimer's, it needs to be a familiar song, which has especially, which has associations and resonance and stirs memory and mood. For people who've lost language, people who have aphasia may often find they can sing and get a lyric with that. I mean, this can delight them as it shows that language is there, although it may be embedded in the song. And there are ways now, although it's a lot of work, of disembedding the language so they can reacquire it, sometimes with a different part of the brain, with the right side of the brain. And one sees that people with Tourette's syndrome, with Huntington's career, with autism, with all sorts of conditions can respond very powerfully to music.
Speaker 2
When we hear music that is calming and soothing and evokes maybe the day you were out on the beach or something, are there actual runner's highs? Are there endorphins that are released? Is this a real feeling? Is there brain chemistry going on that create that soothing?
Speaker 1
There's quite a lot of work on this and both the physiology of thrills and chills but also of calming music. You can investigate it electrically by doing EEGs or by brain imaging or by looking at some of the chemicals. The
Speaker 2
changes are very real. Let's go to the phones. To Dan in Toledo. Hi, Dan. Hi. Hi there. I had heard that Hendrix was one of these people that had optical and audio nerves crossed so that he could act. Can you see music? I guess I think what he was going to talk about. There are other people who see colors and things like that.
Speaker 1
Quite a number of people have some crossing of the senses, as this man puts it, in which they will involuntarily and automatically have – see things, smell things, taste things as they hear them or vice versa. One of the commoners is to see colors with music. And this is not just a metaphor. It's not just a poetic association. This is totally real, so real that people who have this can't imagine how it would be to be otherwise. I mean, I saw this when the composer Michael Torkey came to visit me. He told me that when he was five, he said to his piano teacher, I love that blue piece. His piano teacher said, blue? he said, yeah, D major, blue. And his piano teacher shook his head and said, well, not for me. Michael says that 40 years later, he still remembers the shock of finding that someone didn't have it. 10 years later, he met, as a teenager, he met someone else who saw colors with keys, but the colors weren't the same as his. What
Speaker 2
is it about the brain that it can survive all these injuries that happened to it, but the music is still there? Well,
Speaker 1
it's because so many different parts of the brain are recruited for listening to music and remembering music. And some of them may get damaged, but others are still there. But also the brain is very plastic. And if one part gets damaged, other parts
Speaker 2
can take over. You see this with many things. To me, it's a recording in there. It's not that simple. I mean, if the recording part gets damaged, I put a hole in my, you know, my LP, it's going to be a skip in that spot. You're saying that it's not so simple that other parts may be able to fill that in.
Speaker 1
I think it's not like a phonograph or, you know, I think that the pitch, the rhythm and all sorts are put in separately. And absolutely one, you may miss one part, but others will fill in. Isn't it amazing that
Speaker 2
so much of the brain is involved in music that is not, you know? Well,
Speaker 1
you know, one would like to ask Steven Pinker, who feels that music is useless and, you know, why this should be so. I mean, I think the question has to be put, why are we so musical if music is of no utility? That
Speaker 3
was my conversation with physician and author Dr. Oliver Sacks from 2007. That's
Speaker 1
all the time that we have for today. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including... Santiago Flores. Emma Gomez. Diana Plasker. Robin Kazmer. And many more. Tomorrow, a roundup of the top science stories of the week. I'm Sci-Fi producer Kathleen Davis. Thanks for listening.

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