It seems that the brain always has to be active, and if the auditory parts of the brain are not getting sufficient input, then they may start to create hallucinatory sounds on their own. Although it is curious that they… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share Image
Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share Image
“The feelings are similar, in some ways, to those one has in Rome or Athens, but quite different in other ways, because this culture… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ears. — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
“We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognise and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
“But it must be said from the outset that a disease is never a mere loss or excess— that there is always a reaction,… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
There is no one part of the brain which recognizes or responds emotionally to music. Instead, there are many different parts responding to different… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
I think there is no culture in which music is not very important and central. That's why I think of us as a sort… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
Who cared if there was really any Being to pray to? What mattered was the sense of giving thanks and praise, the feeling of… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
“unconscious motives may sometimes ally themselves to physiological propensities, of how one cannot abstract an ailment or its treatment from the whole pattern, the… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
“We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative — whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders -- Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- because of its unique capacity… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
Psychotic hallucinations, whether they are visual or vocal, they address you. They accuse you. They seduce you. They humiliate you. They jeer at you.… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
Much more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
About 10 percent of the hearing impaired get musical hallucinations, and about 10 percent of the visually impaired get visual hallucinations. — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
The rhythm of music is very, very important for people with Parkinson's. But it's also very important with other sorts of patients, such as… — Oliver Sacks Copy Share
