Re: musical hallucinations

[Pierre Divenyi <pdivenyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Al and all,

Here is the 64K$ question: what is musical hallucination and what is mental
rehearsal of music? As a musician, I can attest being able to "hear" music
at will (pieces that I know well), or sometimes even against my will, with
details sometimes as complete as during real listening. A colleague of
mine, Tom Nakada, has performed a few fMRI experiments and found that the
regions of activity for real and mental listening were comparable, except
for the absence of activity at and around primary auditory areas when no
sounds were present. One person's musical hallucination is another person's
rehearsal.

Greetings,

Pierre


Pierre L. Divenyi, Ph.D.
Speech and Hearing Research
V.A. Medical Center and East Bay Institute for Research and Education
Martinez, CA 94553
Phone: +1 (925) 370-6745
FAX:    +1 (925) 229-3035
e-mail:  pdivenyi@ebire.org