If music be the food of love, play on
By Colin
McGinn The New York Review of Books Volume 55, Number 3, March 6,
2008
Edited by Andy Ross
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks Knopf, 381
pages
Music activates almost all the human brain: the sensory centers, the
prefrontal cortex that underlies rational functions, the emotional areas
(cerebellum, amygdala, and nucleus accumbens), the hippocampus for memory,
and the motor cortex for movement. When you listen to a piece of music your
brain is abuzz.
Oliver Sacks is fascinated both by the normality of
this oddity and by its abnormal manifestations. His interest is in the
pathologies of musical response. We never lose sight of the human being
exhibiting the pathology, but we are also continually reminded of the role
of the brain.
Sacks notes that not only do human beings listen to
music a lot, they also imagine music constantly. Even if your ears aren't
being musically stimulated, you may be self-stimulating musically the rest
of the time. Sometimes, we voluntarily produce musical images, as when we
sing a song to ourselves for the fun of it, but we can also be subject to
involuntary musical imagery.
Sacks calls these "brainworms" and the
term is appropriate: musical imagery can be remarkably intrusive and
annoying, subverting our ability to control our own imaginative lives. It
gets in there and it won't let go. That is the "normal" case, but it can get
much worse in abnormal cases. In those who suffer from musicogenic epilepsy,
convulsions are brought on by musical stimulation.
The range of human
musicality is also remarkable. There are musical savants with unusually low
general intelligence and poor linguistic capacity. Some people are deaf to
melody but can appreciate rhythm, and some have the reverse problem. Then
there is the phenomenon of musical synesthesia, in which particular notes
are associated with visual impressions.
The human memory for music is
generally excellent. People can remember songs from their childhood, for
example, with striking accuracy. Musical memory connects with our sense of
self, since musical taste and experience are closely linked to personality
and emotion.
The capacity of melody to soothe and rhythm to excite is
obvious to anyone with musical sensitivity. Music is so intimately connected
with emotion and movement that its power can be tapped to elicit both sorts
of response. Music is known to excite the motor cortex even when the
listener isn't actually moving.
In severe depression, say after
bereavement, music may lose its appeal, sounding flat and pointless. Yet, as
Sacks reports from personal experience, it may also be the trigger that
lifts profound depression. In dementia, dormant musical powers can be
released, as the more cognitive functions deteriorate.
Sacks tends to
treat all music as psychologically equivalent. It might have been useful to
ask how different musical forms affect the mind and brain. The increasing
dominance of rhythm in popular music, at its starkest in rap music, must
surely tell us something about how the human brain responds to music.
Sacks generally eschews theoretical speculation, but he does raise one
theoretical possibility on the notion of disinhibition. This theory suggests
that the brain contains untapped potential that is released only in unusual
conditions. In the case of music, it may be that we are potentially far more
musical than we appear, if only our musical brain wasn't being held in check
by the rest of our brain.
Although Sacks endorses the notion of a
music instinct, he says little about why such an instinct might have arisen.
The ability to sing and dance well serves to attract mates, because it
signals intelligence, agility, and emotional quality. From this point of
view, musical ability looks like an evolutionary advantage. We are a musical
species because our success in the mating game depends upon it. Why is the
love song the most popular form of music in the world? Because love songs
are about the selection of mates.
Oliver Sacks reminds us of our
extreme psychological complexity, and of the fragility of the human mind.
From the inside, the mind can seem simple and automatic, like a pearl in an
oyster, but actually it all depends on the complex orchestration of the
millions of neurons that compose our brains. If anything goes even slightly
amiss in the machinery, the mind can be altered beyond recognition.
AR Ah, music ... Colin can write decent book
reviews when he tries.
Ross on McGinn on life and mind
Ross on McGinn on Honderich
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