Amy B. Graziano

Hermann Oppenheim's Observations about Music in Aphasia

Hermann Oppenheim was influential in many areas of neurology, but his ideas about music are relatively unknown. In 1888, he published a paper that outlined how the assessment of music skills in patients with aphasia could lead to a better understanding of aphasia and language. Oppenheim conducted the first comprehensive music assessment as part of a neurologic examination and presented the first case series of music in aphasia. His paper was widely cited and had significant influence over the next 30 years. Although largely unrecognized as such, Oppenheim was an important historical figure in the study of music and neurology.

Some early cases of aphasia and the capacity to sing

This chapter examines early cases of aphasia that include observations of the capacity to sing. Although the majority of these cases were published in the late nineteenth century, earlier reports exist and provide insights into the early thinking about the capacity to sing in aphasia, a topic that continues to the present day. The observation that some patients with aphasia and limited speech output were able to sing the texts of songs inspired scholars to examine the relationship between music and language. Early ideas about the capacity to sing were provided by well-known neurologists, such as John Hughlings Jackson and Adolf Kussmaul. The work of Herbert Spencer about the origins and function of music heavily influenced Jackson and others in their thinking about aphasia. This work also led to an increased interest in understanding music abilities in persons with aphasia and, later, in the brain mechanisms of music. The chapter provides a background as to why there was an interest in the capacity to sing in persons with aphasia and what influenced early thinking on this topic.

Music, neurology, and psychology in the nineteenth century

This chapter examines connections between research in music, neurology, and psychology during the late-nineteenth century. Researchers in all three disciplines investigated how music is processed by the brain. Psychologists and comparative musicologists, such as Carl Stumpf, thought in terms of multiple levels of sensory processing and mental representation. Early thinking about music processing can be linked to the start of Gestalt psychology. Neurologists such as August Knoblauch also discussed multiple levels of music processing, basing speculation on ideas about language processing. Knoblauch and others attempted to localize music function in the brain. Other neurologists, such as John Hughlings Jackson, discussed a dissociation between music as an emotional system and language as an intellectual system. Richard Wallaschek seems to have been the only one from the late-nineteenth century to synthesize ideas from musicology, psychology, and neurology. He used ideas from psychology to explain music processing and audience reactions and also used case studies from neurology to support arguments about the nature of music. Understanding the history of this research sheds light on the development of all three disciplines-musicology, neurology, and psychology.

Music as a Tool in the Development of Nineteenth-Century Neurology

Music has become an increasingly popular topic in neuroscience research over the past two centuries. The roots of the current interest in music and the human brain can be traced back to the second half of the nineteenth century, when neurology emerged as a medical specialty (although there were a few observations prior to the nineteenth century). Several prominent, nineteenth-century neurologists used music as a tool to help understand brain function, just as they used a reflex hammer and other clinical tools. Music was used, in particular, to examine the varieties of higher cognitive functions in patients with aphasia who had difficulty with speaking or understanding language after brain damage. Early scholars were fascinated by the paradox that some patients who were unable to speak were able to sing the text of songs. This simple observation inspired neurologists to explore music function in more depth in order to better understand aphasia and also to develop ideas about higher cognitive functions and emotion. The initial observations about music in persons with aphasia appear to be mostly by ‘chance’, and more systematic evaluations of music abilities were not done until the later nineteenth century.