Friday, October 9, 2009

Music and Emotion from "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" by Oliver Sacks

Musciophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks, Vintage Canada, Toronto, 2007. The Chapter “The Case of Harry S.: Music and Emotion”

These short stories, the snapshots of Oliver Sacks’ work with patients who are neurologically damaged, interest and puzzle me all at the same time. There are so many opposites in these stories. They are sad yet hopeful, but mostly they remind me of how amazing and intricate, yet vulnerable and fragile our bodies and minds really are.

This particular chapter is about Harry S who was a young man who suffered an aneurysm while cycling. His frontal lobes were damaged as a result of extensive bleeding into them, and after he recovered from his coma, he lost the use of his legs and a large part of his “mind and personality.” Harry recovered some of his intellectual ability and would still read the magazine Scientific American (he was a mechanical engineer before his aneurysm). He could understand what he read but wasn’t excited by the articles or “wonder” about the ideas contained in them. He lost his emotion and was “inert, flat, and indifferent.” (Sacks, p. 334) But Harry loved Irish music and he had a good tenor voice. When he sang, he was no longer emotionless but instead he was transformed, full of emotion.

Sacks goes on to talk about a few of his other post-encephalitic patients. For example, Magda, wrote in her diary, “I ceased to have any moods. I ceased to care about anything. Nothing moved me- not even the death of my parents. I forgot what it felt like to be happy or unhappy. Was it good or bad? It was neither. It was nothing” (Sacks, p.335) Sacks doesn’t discuss here whether there was any musical therapy with Magda but later in this chapter, he talks about Stephen, an autistic savant who was so transformed by music, Sacks wrote the words, “autism disappears” in big capital letters in his notebook. When the music stopped, Stephen appeared autistic again. (Sacks, p. 338)

Is this transformation possible? How does this happen? How is music affecting the emotional areas of the brain? Is it only music that incites this transformation? Is there another explanation?

Well, there is some debate about frontal lobe diseases . It is possible that “such patients may involuntarily echo another’s gestures or actions or speech, and tend to a sort of involuntary simulation or mimicry.” (Sacks, p. 335) It is as if they are impersonating another being, but maybe they are impersonating another being, their former self, a self that was lost and in this moment is regained. The neuropsychologists/therapists/observers sometimes seem convinced that the musical emotion, the transformation is genuine. Can musical emotion be faked? As a musician, I would probably always want to believe in the transformational ability of music but how do I know.

But that’s the thing, we don’t know. We can study and speculate and hope but who is to know for sure. I keep thinking of Magda’s comment about not feeling happy or unhappy, feeling nothing – how is that possible not to have emotion. Think about all of your emotions - happiness, sadness, pleasure, pain, ecstasy, despair and the list goes on. They aren’t all great emotions and some of them can be very challenging to deal with but at least you have the brain ability to feel them – imagine not being able to.

4 comments:

Vasana said...

Comment 2
This sounds like a very interesting and moving book. When we went to Baycrest Hospital I was amazed to see the video of the Parkinson’s patient who could move with ease when music was played. If we could figure out how music produces therapeutic affects we could potentially cure or at least lessen the affects of many diseases. Perhaps Harry was able to express emotion through music, because, music is an indirect route to emotion. Rather than saying “I’m sad” we can clearly convey sadness through music without using the direct words. I have often found that certain music incites an intense emotional reaction that I do not experience in any other situation. I don’t know why this happens. I have always felt this way even when I was a young child listening to music. I think music steps beyond the boundaries of language and expresses the complexities of human emotion that we are unable to articulate. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why people with brain injuries are able to connect through music.
Vasana

Augusto Monk said...

Yes, I agree with Vasana. I have to say that as time goes by, I feel less and less emtional about music; I find it harder to say if I feel pleasure or dislike. I don't think that the lack of an emotional response is that rare. Having worked with primary scholl children in schools, I noticed that autistic children usually are irresponsive emotionally, although, sometimes, and this depends on the level of autism, some autistic kids can be interested in a piece of music although not moved emotionally. The other thing I observed is that most of the emotional responses kids have are culturally generated; in other words, the react in a certain way because they are expected to show pleasure and dislike, I don't think that emotion is innate to the human being, rather I think that emotion is the result of culture. On this note, one of the best books I read in my life, The Power Of Now by Ekhart Tolle, touches on this, on the fact that most of our emotional reactions are the fabriactions of our minds, rather than an innevitable impulse as we usually believe.

Linnea said...

I never cease to be amazed by how the brain works, or doesn’t work. Every time someone experiences brain damage in some way, we are reminded not only of the amazing complexity of the brain, but also of the uniqueness of each brain.
Liana commented on the tragedy of losing the ability to experience emotion. This reminded of some of the clips we watched in class, particularly the one documenting the man whose personality had been entirely altered by brain damage. I find it so remarkable and tragic that our whole identity can be so altered in such a short time.
I agree with Augusto’s comment about how emotional responses are culturally generated. I think this goes hand-in-hand with some of the ideas we have discussed in class about how our concept of major and minor as happy and sad are far from universal. Also, I am reminded of the lecture by Dr. Steven Brown that I watched that spoke of the fact that our primary emotional response to music is aesthetic (liking or disliking).

Linnea said...

I never cease to be amazed by how the brain works, or doesn’t work. Every time someone experiences brain damage in some way, we are reminded not only of the amazing complexity of the brain, but also of the uniqueness of each brain.
Liana commented on the tragedy of losing the ability to experience emotion. This reminded of some of the clips we watched in class, particularly the one documenting the man whose personality had been entirely altered by brain damage. I find it so remarkable and tragic that our whole identity can be so altered in such a short time.
I agree with Augusto’s comment about how emotional responses are culturally generated. I think this goes hand-in-hand with some of the ideas we have discussed in class about how our concept of major and minor as happy and sad are far from universal. Also, I am reminded of the lecture by Dr. Steven Brown that I watched that spoke of the fact that our primary emotional response to music is aesthetic (liking or disliking).