I recently read Oliver Sacks’ intriguing novel, Musicophilia. In a collection of unique anecdotes, he explores the links between music and neurology. The following is an essay I wrote in response to the book.
In Musicophilia Oliver Sacks supports the claim that music can provide insight into the complex neurological workings of the mind. Because rhythm is so highly represented in the functioning brain, Sacks claims that music is an art form that specializes not in external expression, but in conveying internal emotions and feelings (Sacks, 300). He deductively proves this by relating to his audience instances of patients affected with musical hallucinations, amnesia, Tourette syndrome, Parkinsonism, autism, Williams syndrome, and many other mental abnormalities. In almost all cases, music serves as a form of internal expression or healing power.
In order to grasp the premise of Sacks’ book, it is important to understand his assertion that rhythm is central to the workings of the nervous system and the overall human community. The nervous system is constantly binding a wide range of senses, like sight, sound, and hearing, in response to certain emotional triggers. “Such binding in the nervous system is accomplished by rapid, synchronized firing of nerve cells…. Just as rapid neuronal oscillations bind together different functional parts within the brain and nervous system, so rhythm binds together the individual nervous systems of a human community” (247). This binding plays out in what is known as “neurogamy” – the binding of two or more nervous systems. When external music or rhythm is internalized identically in everyone listening, there is an emotional connection amongst all participants (244-245). The “seductive and enigmatic power of music” then makes it hard for others to resist joining into the chanting or dancing that rhythm gives rise to (293). This irresistibility to rhythm is perhaps best explained by theories of cultural evolution. We see rhythm utilized in many aspects of society, ranging from military and funeral marches to rhythmic songs that arouse agricultural labor and other forms of group efforts (246). Therefore, it can be said that rhythm is a prerequisite to many essential aspects of society that bind people together and result in productivity or the expression of internalized feelings.
Oliver Sacks goes farther than simply proving that rhythm is vital to human activity – he draws up a collection of several individuals he had professionally overseen who all have some sort of mental anomaly relating to music. He uses these people as examples to argue that music is powerful not only as an external force useful for connecting human nervous systems or helping a patient with amnesia revive his memory, but that music is also something that comes from within the human mind. Musical talent, or even musical depravity, is something that can be “switched on,” so to say, by the damage or dominance of the left or right hemispheres.
In the case of Martin, a musical savant, he grew up functioning normally until the age of three when “he contracted meningitis, which caused seizures and a spastic weakness of his limbs and voice” (151). Martin also had severe vision problems. As he developed an impulsive and “odd” personality, he became heavily fascinated with listening to and performing music. This fascination led to a phonographic memory – he memorized nearly everything he heard. By the time he was an adult he had memorized one of Bach’s entire cantatas as well as two thousand operas. The question, then, is what was the origin of this auditory and musical capability? Sacks argues that “his auditory and potentially musical powers…[gained] strength from the poorness of his vision” and the loss of cortical control as a result of his meningitis (152-153). Essentially, because Martin was nearly blind, he relied on hearing to orient himself to the world. And because he was out of control of some major motor functions, his brain automatically stimulated the release of higher powers in other parts of the brain (particularly the auditory processing region).
Like Martin, Jerome Bruner exercised extraordinary musical abilities as a result of lack of vision. Oliver Sacks claims that Jerome “is immensely sensitive to music and possesses…powers of musical memory and imagery” (160). When asked about this talent, Jerome says that in his first two years of life he was blind (until he had his cataracts removed) – this blindness forced him to pay close heed to sounds of all sorts, especially music and voices. This sensitivity to anything that has to do with hearing grew with him and remains a significant aspect of his adult life.
Using this anecdote, Sacks points out that it is not uncommon for blind people to have intense auditory powers. He addresses and corrects the common stigma surrounding blind people; that they are cut off from society and it is a phenomenon that they could engage in musical activity. “Social forces here are matched by strong internal forces” (161). In this case, social forces would be the stereotype that it is rare for blind people to be musical, and internal forces would be the strong development of verbal and auditory aspects in children born blind or in people who experience a sudden loss of vision. Because “a third or more of the human cortex is concerned with vision,…if visual input is suddenly lost, very extensive reorganizations and remappings may occur in the cerebral cortex, with the development, sometimes, of intermodal sensations of all sorts” (163). This is confirmed in studies performed by Pascual-Leone et al., which show that in patients born blind, the visual cortex “is reallocated to other sensory inputs, especially hearing and touch, and becomes specialized for the processing of these” (163). Therefore, because of the internal power of music, senses are not necessarily lost in blind people, but are redistributed to strengthen other parts of the brain, especially parts involved with music processing.
Another way that music shines as an internal powerhouse plays out in Tourette’s syndrome. Some people with Tourette’s use music to harness and control their incessant ticcing. John S., a Tourette’s syndrome patient, described to Sacks that “music is a huge part of [his] life. It can be both a blessing and a curse when it comes to ticcing. It can send [him] into a state where [he] forget[s] all about Tourette’s, or it can bring on a surge of tics that is difficult to control or bear” (226). It is important to note that music heavy with rhythm particularly trigged the patient’s tics – the ticcing sped up and slowed down according to the tempo of the music. There are wide ranges of Tourette’s syndrome, and each patient has a unique reaction to music. However, there is most always some sort of reaction. For drummer David Aldridge, music was a sort of “permission to explode” in relation to his Tourette’s. Aldridge wrote: “Rhythm and Tourette’s syndrome have been intertwined from the first day I found that drumming on a table could mask my jerky hand, leg and neck movements” (228). Aldridge learned that the rhythm of drumming helped him harness the power of his violent outburst of tics and essentially masked his symptoms for a period of time. Tourette’s is a syndrome that forces people to fight the autonomous and rebellious tendencies of their brains; music, however, can serve as a creative release that acts as a form of self-awareness and intentionality. For some patients, being engaged in music is the only way they can feel in control of themselves at all. Therefore, music and rhythm are internal factors that have the power to control the workings of the lower levels of the brain.
Clive Wearing, a victim of amnesia, further represents the profoundness of music. Clive’s amnesia was so severe that he felt as if he was just waking up every moment of his life. His wife wrote to Oliver Sacks, “His talk might be a jumble no one could understand, but his brain was still capable of making music” (204). The only time that Clive seemed to be a normal, functioning person, was when he was hunched over his organ producing beautiful music or when he was singing a duet with his wife. It was as if music animated him, or brought him back to life so to speak. As Oliver Sacks explored how a man with practically no memory at all could remember perfectly how to produce music, he introduced the idea that music is not something that requires explicit memory. “It may be that Clive, incapable of remembering or anticipating events because of his amnesia, is able to sing and play and conduct music because music is not, in the usual sense, remembering at all” (212). Sacks goes on to explain that participating in music does not require remembering the past or anticipating the future, but rather is a present consciousness. He quotes a philosopher of music, Victor Zuckerkandl: “Every melody declares to us that the past can be there without being remembered, the future without being foreknown” (213). This philosophy coupled with Clive’s ability to participate in music despite his amnesia proves that music is a power that originates within the human brain, requiring no explicit memory and transcending the natural course of time.
In conclusion, there is a strong case that because music is so deeply engrained in the workings of the human mind, it can be utilized as an internal power that can give us insight into the way humans communicate, sense, and remember. Sacks ties together several aspects of music and rhythm to formulate his proposition – music’s capability to bind multiple nervous systems together, auditory processing enhancing as a result of reallocation of other sensory inputs, music as a way for Tourette’s patients to harness impulsive ticcing, music as a way for patients with memory loss to function normally, and many other examples. We should all learn to appreciate the neurological and social power of music on a deeper level.
Sacks, Oliver W. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Print.
Blossoming Psychology 