Musicophilia

Tales of Music and the Brain

by Oliver Sacks

Trade Paperback

English language

Published Jan. 5, 2008 by Vintage Canada.

ISBN:: 978-0-676-97979-4
OCLC Number:: 190965490

What goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music? What is it about music, what gives it such peculiar power over us, power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force? Music has no concepts, it lacks images; it has no power of representation, it has no relation to the world. And yet it is evident in all of us–we tap our feet, we keep time, hum, sing, conduct music, mirror the melodic contours and feelings of what we hear in our movements and expressions.

In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us–a power that sometimes we control and at other times don’t. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer. This is a book that explores, like no other, the myriad dimensions of our experience of and with music.

Source: penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/159607/musicophilia#9780676979794

44 editions

Álvaro G. Molinero reviewed Musicofilia by Oliver Sacks

¿Existen estructuras anatómicas exlusivas para la música en el cerebro?

3 stars

El siempre magnífico Oliver Sacks seguirá sacudiendo nuestros cerebros varias décadas después de su muerte. En musicofilia se propuso demostrar, siempre con su método heredero del interpretativimos de Max Weber y mejorado con un constante empirismo, que la música posee estructuras exclusivas en el cerebro: existen personas que pierden completamente el habla y la memoria semántica, pero son capaces de recordar música, aprender nueva y mantener intactas sus habilidades musicales.

La mayor parte del libro está dedicada a este tipo de personas –personas que con grandes demencias, donde pierden toda la memoria, conservan las habilidades musicales en perfecto estado (y la memoria musical)– y a personas que han obtenido habilidades musicales repentinas, por traumas o lesiones, o por tipos particulares de demencia, como la demencia frontolateral que en ocasiones puede cursar con una hipermusia acusada, o personas con habilidades musicales naturales, como en el caso del síndrome de Williams, …

Una lectura muy recomentable.

Matthew M. Conroy reviewed Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

Review of 'Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Very good.

I found the final two chapters to be especially excellent and moving.

mothlight reviewed Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

Review of 'Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I enjoyed the first part of this, all about music and the brain, and how music makes us human and uniquely human. The second half was more just short chapters about different case studies of slightly different neurological problems which also involved music. They were interesting but just didn't seem to be leading anywhere. I would have wanted much more of the first half and much less of the second.