"He had lost his right arm in World War I, had many opportunities to see how - every time we put a fingering of a new composition - his stump participate in the process . Several times I said that I should trust his choices, because he still felt every finger of his right hand. starmene Sometimes I sat in silence as he closed his eyes and his stump, stirring continuously. This is now when he lost his arm for many years "
Letter Erna Otten, a student of the Viennese pianist Paul Wittgenstein.
is not the first time we hear of phantom limbs. I heard about it for the first time after a case of amputation of a lower limb occurring to a relative of mine, that although he had no leg, he continued to feel pain, something that puzzles us, as to cast doubt on the health mind of the unfortunate.
For a long time doctors have regarded the arts as mere ghost psychic hallucinations, due to the loss of the limb.
In "Musicophilia" book came to light in 2007, written by the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks, among other things, we talk also the case of the pianist Wittgenstein, and the research conducted by Silas Weir Mitchell, a neurologist who had the "luck" (it sounds bad considering the context, but luckily I mean a case of purely scientific opportunism) to hear the stories of many soldiers wounded in 'hospital "Stump Hospital in Philadelphia during the American Civil War. Convinced of the omnipresence of the "phantom limb" in all amputees, Mitchell demonstrated the real presence explained as "neural representation of the limb in the brain." So the case of neural representation dependent on integrity of the brain and spinal cord and portions of the survivors of sensory nerves and motor activity.
Movement the "stump" (ie what is left arm amputee) mentioned by Erna Otten in the letter addressed to Oliver Sacks, is simply the result of excitement over these areas resulted in neuro-sensory-motor.
All Mitchell's thesis has been confirmed by modern Neurofisiobiologia, which has also discovered that after the amputation, done a real reorganization of the brain with special "awareness" of the cortex (from which the neural impulses ) regarding the "stump."
The reorganization of the brain is a very important phenomenon and worthy of curiosity for musicians who want to understand a little better operation your brain for learning.
How often it happens, when we are going to study a complex technical passage on the piano, to discover that the study "mental" is at least as productive as the instrument? My teacher always told me: "shut the piano and desk study !"... eh ... but that effort though, especially if we consider that doing so is less of a player they need most: the ... those sound vibrations that reach our ears and we call music. It is not difficult to understand that the table will never give us back the joy of music, let alone a nice shiny desk. I enjoyed discovering
Then, while attending a course in psychology of music, held by Antoinette Prof.Maria Lamanna and especially through the use of the text "a Teaching Tool - Reflections and methodological proposals on the linearity / complexity - by Anna Maria Cool," which extensive research in neurological explanations are giving to those who were just "speculation."
Research Neurofisiobiologia of the movement are showing that the learning of complex motor skill consists of two phases.
1 - Learning fast, momentary, simultaneous operation performed on the instrument.
2 - Pre-Post-training: that is the phase after the exercise in which is a true reorganization of the brain, which promotes learning, assimilation in the mental and stabilization of the motor representation (reorganisations and transformations brain demonstrated by Parsons and PET - Positron Emission Tomography). Simply put, we are talking about the stage (it seems to be especially during the first 6 hours post-exercise) in which the brain is organized and works in silence, giving us the ability to better deal with the transition studied.
Returning to the book by Sacks ...
"Musicophilia" deals with a fairly limited range of issues revolving around the psycho-musical. It would be impossible to mention all the cases, the examples and the diseases described by the author.
We start from a real case in the story of Dr. Musicophilia chicory struck by lightning in a phone booth. After risking death, the protagonist of the story wakes up filled with an incredible desire to make music, it begins to study piano and composing music by himself.
I can also perform with a fair result.
Equally interesting, as disturbing are the cases of patients (musicians or not) with epilepsy. During the seizures "feel" unconsciously music without being able to identify the source, and, after the seizure, they can not remember the music played mentally. Sacks talks about true and their "Aurea music associated with the attack" . Instead appear to be several cases of epilepsy musicogenic, meaning those seizures induced by music as in the case of Mrs. N., who almost accidentally finds the connection between its crisis by listening to Neapolitan music. Underwent a partial lobectomy Thunder and the disease is eradicated.
Then we deal with mental associations, namely the ability to "draw" the music mentally, "on command", and "ear worms (ear borers) or better brainworms " (worms in the brain - why is it that the problem exists in the brain), ie those tunes that remain etched in the mind and of which you just can not leave. Beautiful example, reported by Sacks, in which a patient is haunted for days by reason of "Poor Rigoletto," and then constantly hear the "seven sets of pairs" that make up the ground.
Well, it must be nice to feel all day " the RA RA RA RA RA RA Ra "! (Beautiful episode, among other things, the work of Giuseppe Verdi).
- Hallucinations of music, music that is real circuits in mind, repeated obsessively, as the iPod in mind (all examples of neurological hallucinations, psychotic and never). It also addresses diseases such as amusia, rhythmic, as in the case of Che Guevara, and Distimbria simultanagnosia. This disease is caused by a lack of connection and integration between the factors affecting the perception of music, something that can be compared to what happens in cases of intoxication from cannabis or hallucinogens, so a musical composition is received in a strange way , chaotic, in which all musical elements seem scattered. Sacks gives the example of Anthony Storr, who Music and the Mind, tells us about his play under the influence of mescaline.
"I was aware of the vibrant and pulsating quality of the sounds that reached me, bite del'archetto on the rope of a direct appeal to my emotions. The appreciation of form, but it was completely compromised. Each time a theme is repeated, we welcome as a surprise. Taken individually, the subjects could kidnap me, but the relationship between them had disappeared "
It is the experience that anyone who may have lived, smoking a joint, drinking a little more, it happens that we focus our attention on an instrument (drums, guitar ...) will capture the attention to detail but all will disintegrate into a thousand fragments, generating a similar perception to disharmony, there is no sense of chords and all the music is perceived as a separate contrapuntal lines , and the sense of time is compromised, so a 3-minute song may seem that hard hour.
For Oliver Sacks I would give a nice 9:30. Good book, interesting both as a doctor for a musician.
Joseph
DF
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