雅思阅读真题:MusicalMaladies音乐病
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雅思阅读真题:Musical
Maladies音乐病,2013年1月12日考过的原题.内容来自新航道《9分达人雅思阅读真题还原及解析3
Musical Maladies
音乐病
Norman M. Weinberger reviews the latest work of Oliver Sacks on music.
Music and the brain are both endlessly fascinating subjects, and as a neuroscientist specialising in auditory learning and memory, I find them especially intriguing. So I had high expectations of Musicophilia, the latest offering from neurologist and prolific author Oliver Sacks. And I confess to feeling a little guilty reporting that my reactions to the book are mixed.
Sacks himself is the best part of Musicophilia. He richly documents his own life in the book and reveals highly personal experiences. The photograph of him on the cover of the book which shows him wearing headphones, eyes closed, clearly enchanted as he listens to Alfred 1 Brendel perform Beethoven's Pathitique Sonata--makes a positive impression that is borne out by the contents of the book. Sacks's voice throughout is steady and erudite but never pontifical. He is neither self-conscious nor self-promoting.
The preface gives a good idea of
what the book will deliver. In it Sacks explains that he wants to
convey the insights gleaned from the ^enormous and rapidly growing
body of work on the . neural underpinnings of musical perception
and imagery, and the complex and often bizarre
The book consists mainly of
detailed descriptions of cases, most of them involving patients
whom Sacks has seen in his practice. Brief discussions of
contemporary neuroscientific reports are sprinkled liberally
throughout the text. Part I, MHaunted by Music," begins with the
strange case of Tony Cicoria, a nonmusical, middle-aged surgeon who
was consumed by a love of music after being hit by lightning. He
suddenly began to crave listening to piano music, which _ he had
never cared for in the past. He started to play the piano and then
to compose music,1 which arose spontaneously in his mind in a u
torrentw of notes. How could this happen? Was I the cause
psychological? (He had had a near-death experience when the
lightning struck him.) Or was it the direct result of a change in
the auditory regions of his cerebral cortex?
Electro-encephalography (EEG) showed his brain waves to be normal
in the mid-1990s, just after his trauma and subsequent Mconversionw
to music. There are now more sensitive tests, but
Cicoria
Part II, “A Range of Musicality,”
covers
To Sacks's credit, part III, "Memory, Movement and Music," brings us into the underappreciated realm of music therapy. Chapter 16 explains how "melodic intonation therapy" is being used to help expressive aphasic patients (those unable to express their thoughts verbaDy following a stroke or other cerebral incident) once again become capable of fluent speech. In chapter 20, Sacks demonstrates the near-miraculous power of music to animate Parkinson’s patients and other people with severe movement disorders, even those who are frozen into odd postures. Scientists cannot yet explain how music achieves this effect.
To readers who are unfamiliar
with neuroscience and music
behavior,
It's true that the causes of music-brain oddities remain poorly understood. However, Sacks could have done more to draw out some of the implications of the careful observations that he and other neurologists have made and of the treatments that have been successful. For example, he might have noted that the many specific dissociations among components of music comprehension, such as loss of the ability to perceive harmony but not melody, indicate that there is no music center in the brain. Because many people who read the book are likely to believe in the brain localisation of all mental functions, this was a missed educational opportunity.
Another conclusion one could draw is that there seem to be no Mcuresff for neurological problems involving music. A drug can alleviate a symptom in one patient and aggravate it in another, or can have both positive and negative effects in the same patient. Treatments mentioned seem to be almost exclusively antiepileptic medications, which "damp down" the excitability of the brain in general; their effectiveness varies widely.
Finally, in many of the cases described here the patient with music-brain symptoms is reported to have "normal" EEG results. Although Sacks recognises the existence of new technologies, among them far more sensitive ways to analyze brain waves than the standard neurological EEG test, he does not call for their use. In fact, although he exhibits the greatest compassion for patients, he conveys no sense of urgency about the pursuit of new avenues in the diagnosis and treatment of music-brain disorders. This absence echoes the book's preface, in which Sacks expresses fear that wthe simple art of observation may be lost" if we rely too much on new technologies. He does call for both approaches, though, and we can only hope that the neurological community will respond.
雅思阅读真题:Musical Maladies音乐病题目
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