What if the music you love to listen to made you sick? Not merely disgusted but physically, neurologically sick? The song “Killing Me Softly” may be more than a simple metaphor because of this medical story I am about to tell you. In fact, I see a House episode coming based on this extremely interesting kind of fear. It is the fear of music and what makes it even more interesting is it causes one to have seizures.
This story came out recently in Scientific American news. This was about Stacey Gayle who has had episodes of seizures which left many doctors so confused on what caused her epilepsy. Scan after scan, her brain did not show anything unusual until the time she got bored and asked for her iPod and listened to her favorite music while she slept which caused her to seize. After that, so many other incidences showed that it was really songs from her favorite artist that were causing it. The doctors became convinced that the music she liked caused parts of her brain to react emotionally to the song which triggered the seizures. Stacey refused brain surgery at first because of the risks involved — memory loss or even some other damage involving other brain functions.
But with iPods, piped-in music in malls, ringtones everywhere she went, and any of them setting off songs sung by her favorite rapper named Sean Paul, she soon realized that she could not escape the seizures. She also became depressed that the music she so loved doomed her prospects of living a normal life. She then agreed to surgery.
The surgery removed about 2.5 inches of her brain. The surgical team homed in on the area where there were overexcited brain cells in the lower section of the brain that takes in sound and figures how to process it, and from areas of the brain involved in emotions and memories of specific experiences. The surgery was successful and there seems to be no apparent loss of brain functions. Stacey could now listen to music she loved without it having to give her an epileptic seizure.
There are apparently only 150 cases reported of musicophobia and only four have had surgery to cure it. This shows the power of music over our beings that our attachment to any piece of music could somehow cause our brains to short circuit. The article did not specify if all the reported cases involved an epileptic reaction to music they liked and not to music they hated. I shall investigate this further so that I will also know if I risk having seizures when I have to endure music I absolutely hate.
The above is an extreme case of how the brain gets overly excited at the sound of music and this happens because music lures our emotions. The brain seems to have a way of skewing our perceptions of physical reality by filtering it through the brewing flasks of our emotions. In fact, there is a study that showed that even mountains seem less formidable when you are looking at them with a friend to whom you are close. Emotional relationships, particularly close friendships, seem to make you underestimate physical challenges ahead.
The study was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by Simone Schnall and her colleagues at the University of Plymouth in the UK and it involved asking students to match the slope of hills by tilting a board. Those with a friend who was just nearby as they took the test underestimated the steepness of the hills; in fact, the longer they have been friends, the less steep the hill seemed to the one taking the test. What was even more powerful was the friend need not even be present at the time of testing to make the subject underestimate the slope of the hill. This was demonstrated when the subjects were just asked to think about a close friend or family member as opposed to strangers or someone they did not like.
I have mixed reactions to the results of the study I just mentioned. I am not so sure if it is a good thing to miscalculate a real physical challenge ahead because of the assuring presence of friends but maybe it is more of proof that when with friends, things seem more reachable, more manageable. Maybe we should have more tests involving other physical challenges and see what kind of miscalculations will result when we have friends around us. I guess this is the working science behind adventures like those faced by tandems on Amazing Race — despite the physical obstacles to hurdle in order to reach the goal, having a close friend will make the prize seem attainable. Music again had it right from the very start — Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.
* * *
For comments, e-mail dererumnaturastar@hotmail.com