Ever since Neanderthals discovered natural tones and rhythms, humans and music have been inseparable. By exploring music's scientific and medical properties, doctors and scientists are only now discovering just how fundamental it may be in human development.

Telling the stories of friends, colleagues, patients, and pen pals, Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia illustrates the power music has over the human body, as well as the various roles it takes on, from enemy to savior. For people suffering from musical hallucinations, selective melodies may become inescapable, incessant torture. For those who experience music-induced seizures, certain rhythms or tones can become attackers, forcing their prey to don earplugs or avoid some locales altogether. For others, however, music is a saving grace: Various Tourette's syndrome sufferers control their tics by playing instruments; impenetrable depressions have been relieved by "heart piercing" tunes; and some Parkinson's patients are mobilized only by certain songs.

Scattered among these endearing tales, Sacks disperses autobiographical tidbits. He recounts his own haunting musical dreams and the hallucinations that followed, explains the extraordinary melody-memorizing powers he uncovered during a brief stint with amphetamines, and rattles off references to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Musicophilia, at times, becomes less the musings of a world-renowned neurologist and best-selling author and more the memoir of an old friend.

Sacks' familiar tone helps keep passages thick with medical jargon palatable, and his personal anecdotes nearly make up for the continuous and distracting plugs for his other works. While contemplating the role of nature-versus-nurture on music's control over humans, as well as the part emotions play, what becomes undeniably clear is music's potential to heal, and how deeply its roots are planted in our culture.

-Myla Dalbesio