"I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders -- Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged." –Dr. Oliver Sacks, M.D.
“Dr. Sacks reports that patients with neurological disorders who cannot talk or move are often able to sing, and sometimes even dance, to music. Its advocates say music therapy also can help ease the trauma of grieving, lessen depression and provide an outlet for people who are otherwise withdrawn.” - St. Louis Post Dispatch on “Awakenings” by Dr. Oliver Sacks
On August 30, 2015, the world lost a profound soul. Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933 to a family of physicians and scientists. With a medical degree from Oxford (Queen’s College), and residencies in San Francisco and UCLA, he later moved to New York where he practiced neurology. After serving as Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center from 2007-12, he then moved to the NYU School of Medicine. He is best known for his collections of neurological case histories, including The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain and An Anthropologist on Mars. His book, Awakenings, inspired the 1990 Academy Award-nominated feature film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. Dr. Sacks was a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. The New York Times referred to Dr. Sacks as “the poet laureate of medicine,” and in 2002 he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University. He was an honorary fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held honorary degrees from many universities, including Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, Georgetown, Bard, Gallaudet, Tufts, and the Catholic University of Peru. (Bio courtesy of www.oliversacks.com)
Dr. Sacks was also a profound writer, a scientist, a therapist, a humanitarian, a musician, a philosopher, a speaker, a motivator, and consumer of life. For musicians and music educators alike, his work serves as an advocacy platform from the pure perspective that music is the very language of the heart and soul, which is understood on a deeper level, even over language itself. What if language never evolved, and people communicated through singing or playing instruments? Music is not a universal language, as it takes on a diverse context and meaning to every culture and individual; however, it transcends meaning and depth in a way that no other art form does, including language communication - never to be duplicated or replicated in one’s auditory senses once heard or performed.
“Dr. Sacks reports that patients with neurological disorders who cannot talk or move are often able to sing, and sometimes even dance, to music. Its advocates say music therapy also can help ease the trauma of grieving, lessen depression and provide an outlet for people who are otherwise withdrawn.” - St. Louis Post Dispatch on “Awakenings” by Dr. Oliver Sacks
On August 30, 2015, the world lost a profound soul. Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933 to a family of physicians and scientists. With a medical degree from Oxford (Queen’s College), and residencies in San Francisco and UCLA, he later moved to New York where he practiced neurology. After serving as Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center from 2007-12, he then moved to the NYU School of Medicine. He is best known for his collections of neurological case histories, including The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain and An Anthropologist on Mars. His book, Awakenings, inspired the 1990 Academy Award-nominated feature film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. Dr. Sacks was a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. The New York Times referred to Dr. Sacks as “the poet laureate of medicine,” and in 2002 he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University. He was an honorary fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held honorary degrees from many universities, including Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, Georgetown, Bard, Gallaudet, Tufts, and the Catholic University of Peru. (Bio courtesy of www.oliversacks.com)
Dr. Sacks was also a profound writer, a scientist, a therapist, a humanitarian, a musician, a philosopher, a speaker, a motivator, and consumer of life. For musicians and music educators alike, his work serves as an advocacy platform from the pure perspective that music is the very language of the heart and soul, which is understood on a deeper level, even over language itself. What if language never evolved, and people communicated through singing or playing instruments? Music is not a universal language, as it takes on a diverse context and meaning to every culture and individual; however, it transcends meaning and depth in a way that no other art form does, including language communication - never to be duplicated or replicated in one’s auditory senses once heard or performed.
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Dr. Sacks and other neurologists argue that people with absolute or perfect pitch see music or keys in colors or taste it in their mouth; however, not all those subjects with synesthesia see colors or tastes the same. Many of those with this sense may also create entirely new colors to differentiate keys, modes, or notes. Research also supports that all infants are born with perfect pitch, but that the cultural weaning process in childhood determines whether a child will be one of the ten thousand adults with absolute pitch.
Rhythm is also easier for the brain to understand than melodic and harmonic processes. Patterns in rhythm originated in civilizations and is “primordial” in its’ basic function, and will continue to serve as a vehicle to diversify cultures. Music used to involve everyone, and in its’ simplest forms, was used to communicate emotions via spiritual rites or healing and religious ceremonies, but now we leave it to trained musicians and composers to create and duplicate.
Rhythm is also easier for the brain to understand than melodic and harmonic processes. Patterns in rhythm originated in civilizations and is “primordial” in its’ basic function, and will continue to serve as a vehicle to diversify cultures. Music used to involve everyone, and in its’ simplest forms, was used to communicate emotions via spiritual rites or healing and religious ceremonies, but now we leave it to trained musicians and composers to create and duplicate.
The brain’s limbic system, where emotions are processed in the amygdala, can stay in tact through many types of neurological disorders, including TBI (traumatic brain injury), Down Syndrome among other syndromes, Autism, and most forms of Dementia (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s). Because the limbic system stays in tact, people are able to process emotions in connection with hearing sounds that they otherwise would not be able to process in the nearby cerebral cortices (temporal, occipital, parietal, and frontal lobes); thus, creating a gateway to responses that would otherwise be non-existent.
As I have mentioned in the past, music is a gateway to lucidity as one of the last portions of the brain consumed within several forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s, is the medial prefrontal cortex. Evidence supports that the medial prefrontal cortex may serve as a hub where music, memory and emotions meet. When Alzheimer’s patients are presented with familiar music, it may grant them the power to respond emotionally, and like a floodgate, open up a pathway to recall facts and autobiographical information. In non-dementia patients, short-term memory functions are rooted through the prefrontal hippocampal networks, but since people with Alzheimer’s can’t process short-term memories there where the disease starts and spreads to all the other parts of the cerebral cortex, it may mean that the amygdala could help Alzheimer’s victims connect to short-term memories by presenting information in a highly emotional musical stimulus or context.
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In all his unique contributions to the field of neurology, musicians are thankful for Dr. Sacks’ prolific and extraordinary contributions because of his experiences as a young man who devoured the works of Bach and became a proficient pianist. His ability to perceive and analyze responses to music amongst thousands of patients alongside their stories created monumental leverage for educators to support music in our schools, in our homes, within our cultures, and in our assisted living facilities where our loved ones desperately need meaningful connections through music.
I will forever be grateful for his inspirational influence within my own research to write IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, and will always hold him in the highest regard and esteem without reservation. So long, Dr. Sacks… #OliverSacks #EndAlz #MusicandMemory
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