Wednesday, July 1, 2009

"Musical Minds"

Did anyone happen to see the Nova program last night about neurologist Oliver Sacks' case studies about how the brain reacts to music? Fascinating stuff.
One part that I found most interesting was the differences shown on a functional MRI when Sacks was listening to Bach as opposed to when he was listening to Beethoven. For many people, the pieces of music would have been so similar as to have not had any differing effect. However, the plan was for him to indicate with an electronic instrument when he felt most emotionally pleased, which happened to be during the Bach, and when he was least pleased, which was during the Beethoven. By his own description, it was not that the Beethoven was displeasing - it just left him "flat". When they showed the brain scans during those musical segments, the Bach brain was lit up like a Christmas tree and the Beethoven brain was not lit up at all - it was very flat!
One point made was that it does seem that people's brains actually can be "deaf" to pitch, or rhythm, or melody, or other musical attributes - that it is not necessarily just something that was a lack of environmental stimulation. It is all in the wiring. Some truly can't hear pitch differences no matter what, or feel a rhythm enough to dance to it, or be able to hear the intervals in a melody well enough to recognize or reproduce it. I know, of course, that there is plenty of evidence to this, but as an educator, I always wanted to think that if a child were exposed to music early enough, the "wiring" could be affected in some way. Actually, I think I will still choose to believe that to some degree, but the research at least provides plenty of insight for an abundance of patience!

1 comment:

  1. You know what's funny? The night before that aired on PBS, they had Oliver Sacks on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to talk about it. I was watching that show on Hulu thinking... this sounds very very familiar... I wish I'd seen the actual show because the whole idea and all the research is fascinating.

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