Video from SOFHeyman
"7 March 2007: Oliver Sacks is a physician, best-selling author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. He spoke on "Music and Mind," with Eric Kandel, Nobel Laureate and University Professor at Columbia University, serving as chair.' from video introduction
Oliver Sacks Observes the Mind Through Music
"Physician and author Oliver Sacks has spent 40 years studying the human brain and illuminating a host of neurological disorders through the compassionate telling of his patients' stories. His newest collection of clinical tales, Musicophilia, examines the uniquely human power of music.
Sacks is the author of numerous books, including Awakenings, about people who suffered Parkinson's-like paralysis for decades after being stricken with sleeping sickness, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a national bestseller about the far reaches of neurological experience. Although Musicophilia revisits some of his earlier cases, Sacks has refocused the stories on music's healing role, making the book "not so much a greatest-hits collection as a purposeful set of remixes," according to the Los Angeles Times.
The neurologist explains that there is no single musical center in the brain, but rather 20 to 30 networks spread throughout every region that analyze different components of music, from pitch to melody. That's why a symphony that moves some people to tears is perceived by others as the cacophonous clattering of pots and pans, a condition known as amusia. Sacks also tells of people haunted by musical hallucinations, in which they hear a set of tunes, or even full-fledged choirs inside their head, a phenomenon one patient describes as his "intracranial jukebox.".. from the article: Oliver Sacks Observes the Mind Through Music