In this study, we addressed the neuroanatomical basis of musicophilia in a series of patients with FTLD. For some people, the amusia has to do with tone deafness and lack of apprehension of melody, sequences of notes, or pitch. I was wondering if this is a possible type if musicophilia. He is the book's moral argument. Musicophilia refers to a neurological condition that presents itself as an abrupt need in the patient for music and an increment in the level of interest that the said patient has in musical sounds. However, this research does confirm that there is a neural reality to sudden onset music obsession, and that the memory and emotion roots of music are one reason why it becomes so salient for musicophilics. By the term "musicophilia" he means that music "lies so deep in human nature that one must think of it as innate." However, the question about music has always concerned how we apprehend music.. A little over a year ago I tried to commit suicide and suffered severe memory problems since then. Among them: a surgeon who is struck by lightning and suddenly becomes obsessed . When introduced to music, if the amount of dopamine in the area is increased, it increases our response to rhythm. Neurology 57, 1485. doi:10.1212/WNL.57.8.1485. We propose, however, that this may reflect a skewed balance between relatively intact processing of musical signals and a relatively intact capacity to link these signals with autonomic and other internal states, versus degraded hedonic processing of social and other environmental signals. The authors conclude that a sudden abnormal craving for music in this patient population represents a shift in interest away from social signals and towards the more abstract hedonic valuation that music represents. 4:347. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00347. From 2008-2012, the Department of Oncology/ Hematology of the University Medical Center in Hamburg-Eppendorf orchestrated a randomized pilot study to determine if music therapy helped patients cope with pain and reduce chemotherapy side effects. Copyright 2013 Fletcher, Downey, Witoonpanich and Warren. doi:10.1097/WCO.0b013e32834cd442. Neuroimage 39, 483491. Each part has between six and eight chapters, each of which is in turn dedicated to a particular case study (or several related case studies) that fit the overarching theme of the section. *Correspondence: Jason D. Warren, Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, 811 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK e-mail: jason.warren@ucl.ac.uk, View all
None of the patients with musicophilia was a professional musician; however, detailed data on patients' premorbid musical training or experience were not available. Sacks discusses how blindness can affect the perception of music and musical notes, and he also writes that absolute pitch is much more common in blind musicians than it is in sighted musicians. Musical hallucinations have been labelled Oliver Sacks' syndrome after the British neurologist and author of the book Musicophilia . At a less stringent uncorrected threshold p < 0.001 over the whole brain volume, additional regional gray matter associations of musicophilia (relative to the non-musicophilic patient subgroup) were identified in left parahippocampal gyrus, temporo-parietal junction and anterior cingulate, and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (Table 2). =NG 7. mint 8 . Ed. Thus, one musician specifically associates a color with a musical key. A recent exception was a new paper by Phillip Fletcher and colleagues at the Dementia Research Centre at UCL (UK) who have looked into the brain basis of musicophilia in 12 patients. The musicophilic and non-musicophilic patient subgroups did not differ in mean age, gender, or years of education (Table 1); average disease duration was non-significantly longer (p = 0.06) in the musicophilic subgroup. This situation is somewhat reminiscent of the individual variation in musicality described among individuals with Williams' syndrome (Martens et al., 2010), or the behavioral heterogeneity of the dopamine dysregulation syndrome in Parkinson's disease (Merims and Giladi, 2008). This work was also funded by the Wellcome Trust and by the UK Medical Research Council. 76, 146157. The technological resources of many different and sophisticated types of brain imaging have aided this expansion. In this book Sacks employs his familiar engaging and compassionate narrative of neurological patients to explore afflictions and treatments surrounding music. Patients who are diagnosed with musicophilia report a sudden, abnormal craving for music and/or increased interest and responsiveness to musical sound. . These cases, as you might guess, are rare. Neurosurg. Cortex doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2012.09.011 pii: S0010-9452(12)00296-1. J. Neurol. Neuroimage 20, 244256. The patient reported by Boeve and Geda (2001) became infatuated with polka music several years after onset of semantic dementia (SD) at the age of 52. from pop to jazz. Brain organization for music processing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The researchers analyzed their symptoms and compulsive behaviors and 22 of . Although the anatomical correspondence was not precise, it is of interest that gray matter areas relatively preserved in our musicophilic group overlapped with those previously associated with the default mode network that has been proposed to mediate internally directed thought as well as the pathogenesis of another neurodegenerative illness, Alzheimer's disease (Pievani et al., 2011). [6] Working with clients with a variety of neurological conditions, Sacks observed the therapeutic potential and susceptibility to music. New Statesman 137 (October 29, 2007): 55-56. Another condition Sacks spends a lot of time on is synesthesia. But if your positive feelings that are inspired by music are helpful to you then it is quite possible that you have found a wonderful form of support for life; a flexible, safe and personalised sound that is unique to you. Sacks presents many topics that arouse curiosity about the ways that the human brain and mind process music. Brain Cogn. Based on available evidence from previous single cases studies (Boeve and Geda, 2001; Rohrer et al., 2006; Hailstone et al., 2009) and neuroanatomical evidence in the healthy brain (Blood and Zatorre, 2001), we hypothesized that musicophilia would be linked to increased atrophy focally involving antero-medial temporal lobe structures. Sacks speaks of personal experiences when music pulled him out of states of grief and depression. 24, 13821397. Sacks tells of several cases that show how music can provoke seizures, a condition called musicogenic epilepsy. The syndrome of semantic dementia was relatively over-represented among the musicophilic subgroup. The frontotemporal lobar degenerations (FTLD) are a diverse group of dementia diseases sharing a propensity to produce selective brain atrophy predominantly involving the temporal or frontal lobes due to deposition of pathogenic proteins. Dopamine dysregulation syndrome, addiction and behavioural changes in Parkinson's disease. Neurologist Oliver Sacks has chronicled the mysteries of the human brain for almost four decades. Also, they saw activity in areas associated with assigning salience to social signals and understanding the mental states of others. (2011). In order to adjust for individual differences in global gray matter volumes during subsequent analysis, total intracranial volume (TIV) was calculated for each patient by summing gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid volumes following segmentation of all three tissue classes. Meyer, L. (1956). Neuron 73, 10601062. Jason D. Warren is supported by a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship (Grant No 091673/Z/10/Z). Already a member? Some cases were ascertained by retrospective review of clinical care-giver interviews. Kirkus Reviews 75, no. For example, the cerebellum, a portion that coordinates movement and stores muscle memory, responds well to the introduction of music. The last date is today's Fletcher PD, Downey LE, Witoonpanich P and Warren JD (2013) The brain basis of musicophilia: evidence from frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Revised and Expanded. Semantic and episodic memory of music are subserved by distinct neural networks. Hum. Sacks also writes about Tourette syndrome and the effects that music can have on tics, for example, slowing tics down to match the tempo of a song. These include musical conditions such as musical hallucinations, absolute pitch, and synesthesia, and non-musical conditions such as blindness, amnesia, and Alzheimers disease. N. Y. Acad. Patient demographic, clinical, and neuropsychological characteristics are summarized in Table 1. All had been diagnosed with a syndrome of FTLD (either bvFTD or SD) by a senior neurologist according to current consensus criteria (Gorno-Tempini et al., 2011; Rascovsky et al., 2011), based on detailed clinical and neuropsychological evaluation and supported by characteristic profiles of regional atrophy on structural volumetric brain MRI. This centrality of the planum temporale for the perception of both speech and music among other things has led researchers to examine intriguing questions about the interrelationship and origins of both linguistic and musical abilities. Recent advances in molecular biology have greatly furthered our understanding of the brain bases for the development of FTLD: in particular, there is the promise of predicting specific molecular substrates from characteristic clinico-anatomical profiles, due to targeted destruction of specific large-scale brain networks by abnormal molecules (Seeley et al., 2009; Rohrer et al., 2011; Warren et al., 2012). doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.56.0911 03.070225, Pievani, M., de Haan, W., Wu, T., Seeley, W. W., and Frisoni, G. B. Regarding working with patients who have varying types of dementia, music therapy can have more global effects. You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.. Book review on Musicophilia. However, the question about music has always concerned how we apprehend music. Library Journal 132, no. "Musicophilia - Bibliography" Literary Masterpieces, Volume 3 When it comes to which music people respond best to, it is a matter of individual background. The right kind of music, usually legato with a clear rhythm, can help patients with Parkinsonian symptoms entrain their movement, particularly walking, with the steady rhythm of the music. Musical Minds is a one-hour NOVA documentary on music therapy, produced by Ryan Murdock. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. This major topic could benefit from more integration of neurobiology and emotional states that has been developed, for example, in works such as Daniel Siegels The Mindful Brain (2007), where experiential and neuroscientific knowledge come together in illuminating ways. 8. In recent years, the fields of neuroscience and neurobiology have expanded greatly. 2019928.pdf,Passage1 Greek coinage 1. "[1], Musicophilia was listed as one of the best books of 2007 by The Washington Post.[2]. Statistical parametric maps of regions of significant gray matter preservation in the musicophilic relative to the non-musicophilic patient subgroup (shown at an uncorrected threshold p < 0.001; atrophy of left hippocampus significant at p < 0.05 after small volume correction for multiple voxel-wise comparisons). The specific brain mechanism of musicophilia might however be defined in future using functional MRI paradigms that compare brain responses to music versus other complex (and potentially arousing) auditory stimuli. Brain 131, 890894. The Dementia Research Centre is an Alzheimer's Research UK Co-ordinating Centre. Curious, cultured, caring, in his person Sacks justifies the medical profession and, one is tempted to say, the human race." When music therapy was first introduced in tandem with other medical fields, it was mostly receptive and patients listened to live solo performances or pre-recorded songs. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. Even listening involves and evokes motor responses. Indeed, many of the people that the reader meets through Sackss stories have inspiring tales of the power of music to ameliorate suffering and to help overcome disabilities. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain- 9781400040810, hardcover, Sacks, new at the best online prices at eBay! With one hand he holds the equipment in place: two big leathery pads smothering his ears, joined by a strap. 24, 542549. eNotes.com, Inc. They also exhibit a superior level of responsiveness to different artistic manifestations. Libraries near you: WorldCat. Comparing subgroups of patients with FTLD that were well matched for other clinical and neuropsychological characteristics, development of musicophilia was specifically associated with relative preservation of gray matter in posterior hippocampus and (less robustly) a distributed network of additional areas including parahippocampal, temporo-parietal, anterior cingulate, and prefrontal cortices; and with atrophy of gray matter in posterior parietal and orbitofrontal cortices. Sacks presents his material in twenty-nine chapters. Norman M. Weinberger reviews the latest work of Oliver Sacks on music. (2006). If music processing can be targeted relatively selectively by brain damage, this lends credence to the idea that these critical brain substrates (and by implication, music itself) served an important though as yet undefined role during human evolution. Sometimes music can go beyond the irritating mental replaying of musical tunes and phrases to full-blown musical hallucinations where a person cannot escape the music that constantly plays unbidden through his or her mind. Details of changes in patients' music listening behavior based on care-giver comments are summarized in Table A1 in Appendix. Sparta Athens Athens =F 4. If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original Opin. A man was struck by lightning after making the unfortunate decision to attempt a phone call in a public booth during a storm. Statistical parameter maps (SPMs) of regional gray matter volume contrasting the musicophilic and non-musicophilic subgroups were examined at a threshold of p < 0.05 after family wise error (FWE) corrections for multiple comparisons over the whole brain and after small volume correction based on our priori anatomical hypothesis. Ive also had head trauma experiences as a child so that might play something into it. Parkinsonism Relat. Sacks writes about how, even though Clive suffers from such severe amnesia, he still remembers how to read piano music and play the piano. People have looked a lot at people who dont react to music (anhedonia) or who have a difficulty in processing music (amusia) but really not much at the other end of the spectrum. Why music suddenly gains such a high degree of emotional value for musicophilics is not a question that is resolved by this research. The book is divided into four parts, with different underlying themes. Another person who is not a musician associates color with light, shape, and position. One positive aspect is that, unlike other books in which neuroscience takes center stage with illustrative case examples, Sacks is able to bring a human face to the sometimes arcane neurobiology of music. Much as in his other nine books, he collects narratives of cases that he has encountered as a neurologist that demonstrate varying aspects of the effects of music on the brain. How would I go about diagnosing my musicophilia. Showing 1 to 3 of 8 entries. Music activates the auditory sense. Download the entire Musicophilia study guide as a printable PDF! Commentary 124, no. Neurodegenerative diseases target large-scale human brain networks. Classification of primary progressive aphasia and its variants. . Sacks also describes cases where synesthesia has accompanied blindness. Sci. Neuropsychologia 48, 26022609. In several cases, musicophilia was accompanied by a change in musical preferences (for example, from classical or jazz to pop or church music). I wish you all the very best for the future. Brain Mapp. This work was undertaken at UCLH/UCL, who received a proportion of funding from the Department of Health's NIHR Biomed-ical Research Centres funding scheme. In some instances, neuroscientists are beginning to identify damage or abnormalities in areas of the brain that seem to correspond with certain types of amusia. However, the musicophilic subgroup showed significantly increased regional gray matter volume relative to the non-musicophilic group in left posterior hippocampus (p < 0.05) after small volume correction over the anterior temporal lobe volume of interest (Figure 1; Table 2). A general surgeon once remarked to me that neurologists do not cure diseasethey admire it. We do not argue that musicophilia is a universal marker of FTLD pathology: across our FTLD cohort, individual patients showed wide variation both in the extent and indeed the direction of their hedonic shift in response to music. Another musical mystery tour. In addition, the network of areas we have demonstrated includes a number of brain regions previously implicated in mediating musical memory and emotional responses to music in the healthy brain (Platel et al., 2003; Koelsch et al., 2006; Watanabe et al., 2008; Herholz et al., 2012), while altered connectivity within this network may provide a mechanism for impaired acquisition of musical skills in congenital amusia (Hyde et al., 2006, 2011) and for acquisition of skills during musical training (Groussard et al., 2010). Since music is a fundamental aspect of every culture, it embodies every human emotion and even can transport us to an earlier time, an earlier memory. At the time of behavioral assessment, all patients underwent brain MRI on a 3T GE Signa scanner (General Electric, Milwaukee, WI, USA) using a 12 gage head coil. 5 (December, 2007): 73-77. Patient age, gender, TIV, and clinical syndromic group were included a covariates of no interest. Increasingly popular scientific literature is making the advances of neuroscience available to a wider audience. The rhythmic and melodic attributes of music establish an internal sense of expectation and resolution which may carry its own cognitive reward (Meyer, 1956; Huron, 2006). Pre-processing of patients' MR images was performed using the DARTEL toolbox of SPM81 running under MATLAB 7.02. There is no "music center" of the brain, yet the vast majority of humans have an innate ability to distinguish, "music, perceive tones, timbre, pitch intervals, melodic contours, harmony, and (perhaps most elementally) rhythm." [12] According to a 2017 report from Magee, Clark, Tamplin, and Bradt,[13] a common theme of all their studies was the positive effect music had on mood, mental and physical state, increase in motivation and social engagement, and a connection with the clients musical identity. Voxel-based morphometry analysis of brain images was based on a linear regression design in SPM8, modeling voxel intensity as a function of the presence or absence of musicophilia across the patient group. We hope that the present findings will motivate further systematic behavioral and neuroanatomical investigation of this intriguing phenomenon. Moreover, the feasibility of these studies allows for music therapists to practice in educational, psychiatric, medical, and private settings. Some of the most common misophonia triggers are oral sounds made by other people. By doing this, music has the ability to temporarily stop the symptoms of such diseases as Parkinson's Disease. I would suggest, as a starting point, that you might contact the authors of the paper I wrote about in this blog. To them, certain types of music help treat their symptoms, and give them relief, even if only temporarily. T 3. (2012). 27, 239250. Interestingly, this moving chapter is almost devoid of any connections with neurobiology. His eyes are closed, his mouth open. Annu. Gorno-Tempini, M. L., Hillis, A. E., Weintraub, S., Kertesz, A., Mendez, M., Cappa, S. F., et al. One of the most affecting chapters addresses music and emotion. publication online or last modification online. He exists only in the moment, with no past memories and no way to hold on to new memories. 2023
