Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain Read Online Free PDF

ears and rush for the nearest doorway or side street. He developed a veritable phobia, a horror of music, and this he described in a pamphlet he titled Fear of Music.
    Critchley had also published papers, a few years earlier, on seizures induced by nonmusical sounds— usually sounds of a monotonous type, such as a kettle on the boil, an airplane in flight, or machinery in a workshop. In some cases of musicogenic epilepsy, he thought, the particular quality of sound was all-important (as with the radio operator who could not tolerate the deep brass); but in others, the emotional impact of the music, and perhaps its associations, seemed more important. 1
    The types of seizure that might be provoked by music were quite varied, too. Some patients would have major convulsions, fall down unconscious, bite their tongues, be incontinent; others would have minor seizures, brief “absences” their friends might hardly notice. Many patients would have a complex temporal lobe type of seizure, as did one of Critchley’s patients who said, “I have the feeling that I have been through it all before; as if I were going through a scene. It is the same on each occasion. People are there, dancing; I believe I am on a boat. The scene is not connected with any real place or event which I can recall.”
    Musicogenic epilepsy is generally considered to be very rare, but Critchley wondered if it might be notably more common than supposed. 2 Many people, he thought, might start to get a queer feeling— disturbing, perhaps frightening— when they heard certain music, but then would immediately retreat from the music, turn it off, or block their ears, so that they did not progress to a full-blown seizure. He wondered, therefore, if abortive forms— formes frustes — of musical epilepsy might be relatively common. (This has certainly been my own impression, and I think there may also be similar formes frustes of photic epilepsy, when blinking lights or fluorescent lights may produce a peculiar discomfort without inducing a full-blown seizure.)
    Working in an epilepsy clinic, I have seen a number of patients with seizures induced by music, and others who have musical auras associated with seizures— and occasionally both. Both types of patient are prone to temporal lobe seizures, and most have temporal lobe abnormalities identifiable with EEG or brain imaging.
    Among the patients I have seen recently is G.G., a young man who was in good health until June of 2005, when he had a severe attack of herpes encephalitis that started with a high fever and generalized seizures; this was followed by a coma and then a severe amnesia. Remarkably, a year later, his amnesic problems had virtually cleared, but he remained highly seizure-prone, with occasional grand mal seizures and, much more commonly, complex partial seizures. Initially all of these were “spontaneous,” but within a few weeks they started to occur almost exclusively in response to sound— “sudden, loud sounds, like ambulance sirens”— and, especially, music. Along with this G.G. developed a remarkable sensitivity to sound, becoming able to detect sounds too soft or distant for others to hear. He enjoyed this, and felt that his auditory world was “more alive, more vivid,” but wondered, too, whether it played any part in his now-epileptic sensitivity to music and sound.
    G.G.’s seizures may be provoked by a large range of music, from rock to classical (the first time I saw him, he played a Verdi aria on his cell phone; after about half a minute, this induced a complex partial seizure). He speaks of “romantic” music as being the most provocative, especially Frank Sinatra’s songs (“He touches a chord in me”). He says that the music has to be “full of emotions, associations, nostalgia” it is almost always music he has known from childhood or adolescence. It does not have to be loud to provoke a seizure— soft music may be equally effective— but he is in particular