Article: The musical mind.(the brain and music)(Brief Article)

Music means nothing to Isabelle Peretz's patients. The University of Montreal psychologist studies people who have suffered brain damage from a stroke or surgery and lost the ability to make sense of the simplest tune. To the most seriously affected, "Happy Birthday to You" is a meaningless jumble of notes, and a Mozart sonata sounds no better or worse when it is played off key.

Their plight seems bizarre. But the bigger mystery, scientists are coming to realize, is that music speaks so powerfully to the rest of us. It's found in every culture and has probably been with us as long as we have been fully human. Yet unlike other basic skills, such as language and ...

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