Brain Damage Saved His Music

Brain Damage Saved His Music

Brian Gallagher

Eight years ago, when neurosurgeon Marcelo Galarza saw images from jazz guitarist Pat Martino’s cerebral MRI, he was astonished. “I couldn’t believe how much of his left temporal lobe had been removed,” he said. Martino had brain surgery in 1980 to remove a tangle of malformed veins and arteries. At the time he was one of the most celebrated guitarists in jazz. Yet few people knew that Martino suffered epileptic seizures, crushing headaches, and depression. Locked in psychiatric wards, he withstood debilitating electroshock therapy.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Martino had an MRI and not until recently that neuroscientists published their analyses of the images. Galarza’s astonishment, like that of medical scientists and music fans, arises from the fact that Martino recovered from surgery with a significant portion of his brain and memory gone, but his guitar skills intact. In a 2014 report in World Neurosurgery, Galarza, of the University Hospital in Murcia, Spain, and colleagues from Europe and the United States, wrote, “To our knowledge, this case study represents the first clinical observation of a patient who exhibited complete recovery from a profound amnesia and regained his previous virtuoso status.”1

Martino has also put on a show for neuroscientists. His case demonstrates neuroplasticity, the brain’s remarkable ability, during development and learning, to “optimize the functioning of cerebral networks,” wrote Hugues Duffau, a professor and neurosurgeon at Hôpital Gui de Chauliac at Montpellier University Medical Center in France, who studied Martino’s case. The guitarist’s recovery epitomizes the ability of the brain to improvise—to compensate for malformations or injuries by wiring new connections among brain regions that restore motor, intellectual, and emotional functions. For an encore, say neuroscientists, Martino’s story is about music and how it helped shape his brain in ways that revived his life.

It’s an interesting report. It’s stuff like this that ultimately may reveal new learnings that might change existing paradigms. Yet reading the full report it’s revealed Martino haven’t made a 100 recovery. It’s difficult not to conclude that important aspects of out selfs like memory are brain based somehow. Any thoughts on how such a case favors dualism?

It’s an interesting report. It’s stuff like this that ultimately may reveal new learnings that might change existing paradigms. Yet reading the full report it’s revealed Martino haven’t made a 100 recovery. It’s difficult not to conclude that important aspects of out selfs like memory are brain based somehow. Any thoughts on how such a case favors dualism?

Complete dualism is impossible to consider seriously.

Whatever consciousness is, it either stored, produced or filtered by the brain. Whatever the case, if you damage the brain you also impact on consciousness

Yes I agree - complete dualism is not compatible with the evidence. This idea that the brain ‘filters’ consciousness is also tremendously vague. What exactly is the signal? Which information does it contain?

Yes I agree - complete dualism is not compatible with the evidence. This idea that the brain ‘filters’ consciousness is also tremendously vague. What exactly is the signal? Which information does it contain?

If I said it was a pattern, which added up... and I gave you a practical example...

A live TV broadcast item of information (pictures & sound), which is watched by millions of people in a single country or state. That broadcast creates a pattern of activation on the viewers brains networks... and this pattern is reinforced (amplified) by these networks, because all the millions of viewers brains networks are activated by the same pattern, at a similar moment in time. And that the later effect of the broadcast on the viewers aggregate behaviour is stronger, the larger the number of people who watch it, and the closer together in time in which it is watched.

I don’t know if that’s true... but I suspect something like it might be the case...

If I said it was a pattern, which added up... and I gave you a practical example...

A live TV broadcast item of information (pictures & sound), which is watched by millions of people in a single country or state. That broadcast creates a pattern of activation on the viewers brains networks... and this pattern is reinforced (amplified) by these networks, because all the millions of viewers brains networks are activated by the same pattern, at a similar moment in time. And that the later effect of the broadcast on the viewers aggregate behaviour is stronger, the larger the number of people who watch it, and the closer together in time in which it is watched.

I don’t know if that’s true... but I suspect something like it might be the case...

The problem with this analogy is that it doesn’t really account for the ego/self. Unless you mean there’s a seperate signal for each and every being (true dualism). Or perhaps you mean that the single signal contains all the information about each and every being living/ever lived. I don’t think things adds up with the overwhelming evidence showing that brain damage in virtually all non-anecdotal cases correlates with loss of memory/personality. Yes you could argue it’s like noise in old analog radios, but brain damage  changes people. I don’t think a damaged radio suddenly changes the information in the underlying broadcast.

I recently read about people who have recovered from minimal consciousness state after several years. It didn’t give me any confidence that the ‘real’ person still was there in any way.

The problem with this analogy is that it doesn’t really account for the ego/self. Unless you mean there’s a seperate signal for each and every being (true dualism). Or perhaps you mean that the single signal contains all the information about each and every being living/ever lived. I don’t think things adds up with the overwhelming evidence showing that brain damage in virtually all non-anecdotal cases correlates with loss of memory/personality. Yes you could argue it’s like noise in old analog radios, but brain damage  changes people. I don’t think a damaged radio suddenly changes the information in the underlying broadcast.

I recently read about people who have recovered from minimal consciousness state after several years. It didn’t give me any confidence that the ‘real’ person still was there in any way.

Why doesn't that account for ego/self..? You have your own network pattern, and that can add up with all similar patterns that are like it... your pattern of 1 minute ago likely to be the most similar to your current pattern... and even though this makes you an individual (able to oppose the group), you are still only an individual within a group.

If you lose a large chunk of your network, you will lose the ability to access some past patterns that added-up via the missing parts of the network... but not all... like a children's join the dots puzzle book, you can lose some of the dots... but you may still make a picture that looks like cat... even with quite a few missing... but it won't be the same cat.

Researchers have trained rodents to associate pain with a particular sensory environment... after training, researchers have then checked that the rodent is trained by putting them into the sensory environment, where upon they freeze and will not move... this indicates it has a memory of the training... they have then destroyed the rats brain until it resembles the brain of someone with final stage Alzheimer's, a mess of tangles! ...they then put the rat back into the sensory environment previously associated with pain... and it explores the environment quite normally, without freezing, suggesting that it has no memory of the training.... they then inject the rat with novel drugs that encourage network creation, and place it in a highly stimulating environment to encourage robust network development... after a few weeks, they place the rat back into the sensory environment previously associated with pain... and the rodent freezes again.... suggesting that it has recovered a memory of the original training again...

This suggests the networks allow *access* to the memory...

There are many other interesting studies which show results which are compatible with this study...

Thank you for taking your time to write such a length reply to a topic I’m aware already have been debated almist endlessly.

That rat experiment yoo refer to - do you have a link to the original research paper? Even if it’s behind a paywall it’s of interest.

Thank you for taking your time to write such a length reply to a topic I’m aware already have been debated almist endlessly.

That rat experiment yoo refer to - do you have a link to the original research paper? Even if it’s behind a paywall it’s of interest.

No problem...

Fischer et. al. (2007) "Recovery of learning and memory is associated with chromatin remodelling"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17468743

Ok Max_B I read the article and it’s of course interesting. But not as evidental as e.g the case of Patient H.M. who lost the ability to form new long term memories after certain brain structure was removed from his brain. This case also poses a new problem for the transmitter theory as it indicates information needs to be passed both to and from external consciousness.