I am in chapter 19 on Keeping Time: Rhythm and Movement in the section on Memory, Movement and Music. This section is even more fascinating than the previous one. The story on Clive Wearing is just incredible. In general the plasticity of the brain comes up a lot and that strikes a hopeful tone. And...

I am almost done with the second section of the book and I am glad that the second section is more interesting than the first of Tales of Woe of Music and the Brain. In the Chapter on Things Fall Apart: Amusia and Dysharmonia I found myself googling anatomy of the brain to try to follow Sack’s descr...

Great choral music samples! I am listening as long as El Nino is raging out there, and today is a good one. The Bulgarian Folk song reminded me of the time I was part of an all girls high school choir and we did some limited traveling singing Austrian folk songs. We did this, because the boys had to...

Yes, I agree, these are all excellent sources. I do remember the program where Joseph Campbell discusses Star Wars, the Samurai Sword being a precursor to the Light Sabre, for one. I am aware of the archetypes for heroes, but I draw a blank as to the archetypes for Near Death Experiences, which is w...

I always thought that “the tunnel of white light” was due to the optical nerve fading away as part of the dying process. I’d like to know more about the “archetypal symbolism” Sacks mentions, some universal examples. Maybe I find something in Joseph Campbell. I am not familiar with that at all.

In this chapter the word “hook” struck me. I recently had the opportunity to sit in at a recording studio on Sunset Blvd in LA. A team of musicians was busy creating pop songs for pop stars. The singer-songwriter came up with the lyrics and melody and everybody was most interested in the “hook” for ...

Growing up in Vienna, Austria, I was always surrounded by classical music to the point where I could identify a specific orchestra by the sound of the piece or even tell if Herbert von Karajan conducted. I could identify the composer and the piece within a few measures. Later, after many years in th...

The truth is, all you need to sustain healthy levels of glutathione is to eat a balanced diet of non-processed meats and green vegetables. ... In any case, the best thing to do if you want to remain unbiased is to buy a few books on Critical Thinking. Books on metacognition and epistemology will he...

Evolution is a fact. That statement may sound like dogma, but the difference is that it is a fact by merit of the mountains of supporting evidence from many different fields of study. . . . In my introductory post I expressed great expectations from Booktalk and it is already working: You have ratt...

[quote="Interbane"]Evolution is a fact. Evolution is a fact sounds like a religious dogma to me. Evolution is not a fact, that's why scientists refer to the Theory of Evolution and not the Law of Evolution. Lots of things about evolution are not proven yet. But that doesn't mean the earth ...