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 ...
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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.
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Oliver Sacks' musicophilia opens a new window into our misterious brains. Even a nonmusical person like me has music inside, perhaps in a inhibited fashion. Inhibitions set by other brain structures oppressing my musical side. Amazingly, nonmusical people may discover a dormant musicality when accident or disease take off the oppression exerted and music surfaces. In some cases this is the only hope left to reach a damaged mind and patients unresponsive to other treatments may improve their condition by awakening music from their neurones. Even patients recovering from orthopedic injuries are able to respond to music stimuli,as Doctor Sacks himself experienced after a fall when climbing a mountain broke his femur. Music have taught him how to walk again.
