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Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
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List Price:
$26.00
Fitness-Health-Care Price:
$17.16
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Manufacturer: Knopf
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.11
EAN: 9781400040810
ISBN: 1400040817
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2007-10-16
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2007-10-16
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: If you've read Sacks and loved it, you'll be disappointed...
Comment: Perhaps the "revised and Expanded Edition" has overcome the original failings of repetition and failure to hold together. This book felt link a compendium of short articles.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Needs editing
Comment: My wife thoughtfully purchased this book for me. I had read about it and was very excited to dive right in. Unfortunately I ended up really having to convince myself to finish it, as it became redundant fairly quickly. Sacks presents (too) many case studies regarding music and the brain, but the presentation feels random and somewhat unfocused. Had his editor suggested grouping the studies by themes or urged Sacks to provide more neurological background information it perhaps would have better kept my attention. It felt as if the reader had to do a lot of work to pull together some of the concepts.
As for the perceived redundancy, I kept waiting for the conclusion or wrap-up that would provide the overarching theme to all the seemingly disconnected patient stories, but to no avail. It almost felt as if the stories were starting to repeat themselves but with different patient names. The length too felt far too long, almost as if everything presented in the first half were just recycled for the second. Additionally, the writing style is very informal and easy to digest, which is not necessarily a positive. The book begins to feel as if the author were afraid to intelligently, academically, and thoroughly dissect the subject matter for fear of alienating too many readers. The result is a glossy feeling, like you're reading the U.S.A. Today version of something that could have really offered some insightful perspectives.
Promising topic, but presented without much organization, background information, or conclusion. I'm surprised that an editor would allow such breadth to be published without any true depth.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Insightful Book
Comment: "Music hath qualities to charm the savage breast."
Congreve's familiar line reiterates the legend of Orpheus who used music to control nature and living creatures.
Whether true or not is a matter of conjecture. But there is a rising body of evidence music stimulates intellect and eases the learning process. And Oliver Sacks, the famed neurologist, enforces that argument in his new book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. He also stresses the healing power of music. Sacks calls the ability to appreciate music a defining quality of our humanity.
Sacks' love of music and his empathy and compassion for people whose lives have been transformed in some manner of other by music shine through his words, offering insight into a myriad of worlds most of us wouldn't have imagined. He reveals that music is so integral to our being we search it out even in the midst of the most disturbing trauma.
In the waning days of her existence my mother suffered musical hallucinations. I wish I had read Dr. Sacks then so I might better have understood what she was going through.
Sacks explains how we tend to take music for granted, to trivialize it in our daily lives, and yet it can be the most restorative factor in our health and life. It reminds me some religions teach that it is music which keeps the world in flux.
Customer Rating:
Summary: understanding brain musicality
Comment: Mr. Stack has made an important contribution to the fascinating world of brain working , it helps to understand the enormous possibilities inside us
Customer Rating:
Summary: Considering the part music plays in the recovery of extremely mentality disabled patients
Comment: Considering the part music plays in the recovery of extremely mentality disabled patients, which is not a new phenomenon, it has recently been explored once again by Oliver Sacks, physician and author, in his new book Musicophilia Tales of Music and the Brain.
There are remarkable examples of patients who were considered feeble, unable to care for themselves, unable to walk or do anything other than sit, and yet these same people when exposed to music were able to astonish those who cared for them either by family or professionals. Sacks explored many different methods of treatment, but in his unique style of writing has been able annotate the case histories of many types of patients who had been virtually given a hopeless life sentence of being institutionalized.
Parkinson sufferers have been given L-Dopa as a medication to relieve the stutter problems they encounter when making movements. The introduction of music as therapy for these diseased people has given back to them smooth movement which the drug could not accomplish.
Oliver Sacks tells of a music therapist who played piano at a hospital who created musical treatment for a patient singing Old Man River using only three words. This man had not spoken for long time and was considered a lost cause. She heard him sing and realized playing songs he knew, she could communicate with him. Dr. Sacks was greatly encouraged by patients progress and then expanded the use of music to other patients.
Also, there are cases described showing the relationship between color and music. Many who have lost their sight after years of seeing describe they can see different colors when they hear specific notes. Even though they are blind, the colors become vivid in their minds. For example Middle C is green.
The general audience will find this textbook style of writing to be somewhat awkward to understand. However, if you are searching for solutions to conditions which afflict members of your family or close friends you will find them described in Musicophilia!
Clark Isaacs
Reviewer
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