Includes bibliographical references (p. 353-367) and index.

1. A bolt from the blue : sudden musicophilia -- 2. A strangely familiar feeling : musical seizures -- 3. Fear of music : musicogenic epilepsy -- 4. Music on the brain : imagery and imagination -- 5. Brainworms, sticky music, and catchy tunes -- 6. Musical hallucinations -- 7. Sense and sensibility : a range of musicality -- 8. Things fall apart : amusia and dysharmonia -- 9. Papa blows his nose in G : absolute pitch -- 10. Pitch imperfect : cochlear amusia -- 11. In living stereo : why we have two ears -- 12. Two thousand operas : musical savants -- 13. An auditory world : music and blindness -- 14. The key of clear green : synesthesia and music -- 15. In the moment : music and amnesia -- 16. Speech and song : aphasia and music therapy -- 17. Accidental davening : dyskinesia and cantillation -- 18. Come together : music and Tourette's Syndrome -- 19. Keeping time : rhythm and movement -- 20. Kinetic melody : Parkinson's disease and music therapy -- 21. Phantom fingers : the case of the one-armed pianist -- 22. Athletes of the small muscles : musician's dystonia -- 23. Awake and asleep : musical dreams -- 24. Seduction and indifference -- 25. Lamentations : music and depression -- 26. The case of Harry S. : music and emotion -- 27. Irrepressible : music and the temporal lobes -- 28. A hypermusical species : Williams Syndrome -- 29. Music and identity : dementia and music therapy.

""In Musicophilia", Oliver Sacks examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people - from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth; from people with "amusia," to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds - for everything but music. Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson's disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer's or amnesia." -- Book jacket.