About this title: Sackss compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains. Here, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people.
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Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: First Edition, First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf, N Y.
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781400040810ISBN:1400040817
Description: Near Fine in Near Fine jacket. . stated first edition, first printing with full number line starting with 1....hardcover edition w/ dustjacket...nice clean copy WITH BRODART DUSTJACKET COVER INCLUDED....science. read more
Description: Fine. B0029LHWPE LIKE NEW Condition **Softcover**--Exactly as pictured--EXACT ISBN MATCH--APPEARS UNREAD-No Real Shelf wear, maybe the tiniest hint of rubbing at the corner, UNREAD, almost unnoticable. No Spine Creasing, No personalizations, No marks in the text at all. Tight and Neat. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A Knopf Inc
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781400040810ISBN:1400040817
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Synopsis Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacks's compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780676979794ISBN:0676979793
Description: Very Good. Paperback, Like New, clean, tight, unmarked, no spine or cover creases. (Near Fine) some light cover edge wear All orders are shipped by kbooks every business day. read more
Edition: Book Club (BCE/BOMC)
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, Westminister, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9781400040810ISBN:1400040817
Description: Very Good Plus in Very Good Plus jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" Like new-crisp, tight, and unmarked. Excellent dust jacket in a new Mylar protective cover. read more
"Oliver Sachs is a musician as well as a neurologist, and both his careers inform this book. I've always suspected that musicians hear more than I do when they listen to music and this book confirms the fact. It is extremely interesting. Sachs is interested in how the brain works, how it processes and how it is changed by music. It gets a little technical for those people who have forgotten biology."
"It's interesting to read through the reviews from other readers on these pages: such a wide range of responses to this book. Some felt it was too technical, others not technical enough; some see the author as a scientist, others as a popular writer pandering to the audience. Many had an expectation that there should have been more substantive analyses of the issues raised, while a few felt it was too analytical. Having read "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" many years ago, Musicophilia struck me as being very much in the same vein.
I think this book is what it is and should be accepted as such: TALES of Music and the Brain. It reads like a novel and offers some fascinating stories about the power of music to affect the human brain, in particular the compromised brain. Musicophilia is aimed at a general audience and meant to enlighten and entertain. It offers glimpses of some of the ways in which people process musical information including a bit of the past and current thinking about brain function, by means of stories gleaned from the author's own practice and experiences."
"I don't know why I keep trying to read books about music. I've finally come to the conclusion that music is never going to be important to me and that I shouldn't bother trying. Which, ironically, is why I picked up this book.
"Musicophilia" is a bunch of case studies about how the brain functions in relation to music. And when I say case studies, it really is a series of case studies. The author, who's written several books in a similar vein, often says "A patient I once had..." or "M.S. came to me with a peculiar condition..." He's even got the gall to reference the same patients that he's written about in his other books in the footnotes. Personally, I found this really smarmy.
But I digress. I really read this book to find out if there's a medical reason for why I just don't care about music. And the short answer is, yes. I'm probably slightly amusical, which means that music doesn't do much for me. But there's no explanation for it. In fact, Sacks doesn't do a whole lot of explaining at all. Most of his entries go something like, "So-and-so came to me with a problem. We tried a bunch of treatments but nothing seemed to work. So they learned to live with it. Until they died." If that's your kinda thing, then go for it. Otherwise, look elsewhere."
"Oliver Sacks' musicophilia opens a new window into our misterious brains. Even a nonmusical person like me has music inside, perhaps in a inhibited fashion. Inhibitions set by other brain structures oppressing my musical side. Amazingly, nonmusical people may discover a dormant musicality when accident or disease take off the oppression exerted and music surfaces. In some cases this is the only hope left to reach a damaged mind and patients unresponsive to other treatments may improve their condition by awakening music from their neurones. Even patients recovering from orthopedic injuries are able to respond to music stimuli,as Doctor Sacks himself experienced after a fall when climbing a mountain broke his femur. Music have taught him how to walk again."
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