Imagine you wake up one morning with somebody’s Spotify playlist broadcasting inside your head. You “hear” all kinds of music, everything from vocal performances to instrumentals to simple fragments of unknown origin. You quickly realize, to your consternation, that the origin of the music is your brain. And that it’s proving difficult to stop, like an ear worm on steroids. You are experiencing a non-verbal auditory hallucination, familiar ground for regular readers of these last few substack entries.
This event is special, however.
I’d like to introduce you to “Rosie”, the 60-year-old woman for whom this Spotify-thing happened. Her behavior was extraordinary enough to garner her very own research paper. Rosie could hear music that she had never previously encountered. She could even sing these unfamiliar tunes to other people and some of them could identify the music. In the words of the paper:
“ … she was able to reproduce non-recognizable songs in a way that could be recognized by others.”
What in the world is going on in Rosie’s brain? How might we understand Rosie’s experience in light of our discussion about how brains process music? What does that say about hearing in general?
MENTAL ILLNESS, SCHIZOPHRENIA AND HEARING VOICES
These questions can be partially answered by examining patients diagnosed with certain mental illnesses – especially schizophrenia. One signature symptom of the disorder includes hearing human voices. In a protocol termed “symptom capture”, scientists have deployed non-invasive imaging technology to observe the brains of these patients while such hallucinations are underway.
These efforts have been fruitful. Researchers discovered that several areas are routinely activated when these patients hear voices (most of them are regions near your ears). One is the inferior frontal gyrus, which is both completely unsurprising and knock-you-down gobsmackingly weird. The unsurprising feature is that this region normally processes speech. The gobsmacking feature is that no sound source is evident while the activation occurs. The brain is auto-generating the experience.
Given these facts, it is easy to imagine what might be going on with Rosie. Portions of Rosie’s “music module” have somehow become activated She is hearing music the same way patients with schizophrenia hear voices.
However, Rosie had the added twist of being able to “play back” tunes she could not recognize. Had she just forgotten them? Did she have an active imagination, and since there are only so many notes, she randomly generated music others could recognize? Unsurprisingly, Rosie’s brain got the attention of researchers interested in memory formation. Here’s one working hypothesis: the “record” button is turned on in our brains even when we are not aware, creating memories that lie just below our awareness. Exactly what a record button might actually be is anybody’s guess.
This is all speculation anyway. Nobody on the planet knows how to explain Rosie.
The research community hasn’t stopped trying, of course. It is intriguing to consider that our memories more actively engage our surroundings than we realize. One of the things we might record is music, even if the experience never percolates into conscious awareness.
Which has disturbing implications all on its own.
REFERENCES
Biller, D. "Musical Hallucinations and Forgotten Tunes – Case Report and Brief Literature Review." Front Neurol 4, no. 10.3389/fneur.2013.00109 (2013).
Toh, W.L. et al. "Hearing Voices as a Feature of Typical and Psychopathological Experience." Nat Rev Psych 1, no. 2 (2022).
When I was a kid, back in the late 50s and early 60s, small Japanese radios were popular, especially at the beach. They were strictly AM stations back then. What was amazing was I could hear the radio broadcasts in my head! And others did too. Because….I had fillings in my teeth, my head had become a radio receiver. Look it up!!!