I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders -- Parkinson's and Alzheimer's -- because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged.
Interpretation
Music therapy can significantly aid recovery and functioning in individuals with neurological disorders.
In this quote, Oliver Sacks emphasizes the profound impact of music therapy on individuals suffering from neurological disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. He highlights the unique ability of music to engage and potentially restore brain functionality that may have been impaired due to these conditions, underscoring the therapeutic value of music far beyond mere enjoyment.
In practice
A presentation on alternative therapies in mental health.
There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate - of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
In general, people are afraid to acknowledge hallucinations because they immediately see them as a sign of something awful happening to the brain, whereas in most cases they're not.
Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape
Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.
We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.
I rejoice when I meet gifted young people... I feel the future is in good hands.
Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'
Nearly all men die of their medicines, not of their diseases.
Science reserves the highest reward for those of you who disprove our most cherished beliefs. At any moment someone from any walk of life could come forward and be responsible for a complete revision of our view of everything.
Gravitational waves, because they are so imperturbable - they go through everything - they will tell you the most information you can get about the earliest instants that go on in the universe.
Science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching.
The most important tool of the theoretical physicist is his wastebasket.
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