Unveiling Amusia — What Happens When Your Brain Can’t Enjoy Music
The music just fades away
A lady from New York had no idea what people meant by the term music.
As a child, she was often asked to sing melodies at school but she was always off-key and off-beat. She couldn’t distinguish between a higher and lower note or even identify different musical instruments.
As she grew older, she would go to concerts with her boyfriends more out of a sense of duty than enjoyment. She described these events as excruciatingly painful and incomprehensible. There wasn’t any meaning or pleasure in these sounds so how could she enjoy music at all?
Everything else worked fine in her brain, she just had no ear for music.
Where did the music go?
This neurological disorder is called amusia, the inability to recognize and understand musical elements such as pitch and feel the emotions music usually brings.
In other words, people can’t connect with music and sadly there’s no treatment for it.
Most cases of amusia happen during people’s lifetime, instead of being born with it, and they arise after brain damage (i.e. ictus). Only between 1.5% and 4% of the population has this disease (so roughly around 120 to 320…
