edited by F Clifford Rose (Imperial College School of Medicine, UK)

The first British book on neurology in music was published over 30 years ago. Edited by Drs Macdonald Critchley and R A Henson, it was entitled Music and the Brain (published by Wm Heinemann Medical Books), but all of its contributors are now either retired or deceased. Since then, there has been an increasing amount of research, and the present volume includes the most significant of these advances.

The book begins with the evolutionary basis of meaning in music and continues with the historical perspectives, after which the human nervous system is compared to a clavichord, highlighting the use of metaphor in the history of modern neurology. It discusses the neurologist in the concert hall as well as the musician at the bedside by showing how neurology enriches musical perception, the main theme being the cerebral localisation of music production and perception. The book also emphasises the value of teaching singing to treat speech disorders and the importance of nerve compression in musicians, the final chapter being on recent techniques of imaging the musical brain.

• The Evolutionary Basis of Meaning in Music: Some Neurological and Neuroscientific Implications (I Cross)
• Historical Perspectives on the Study of Music in Neurology (J K Johnson et al.)
• The Creative Brain: Fundamental Features, Associated Conditions and Unifying Neural Mechanisms (S Blunt)
• The Neurologist in the Concert Hall and the Musician at the Bedside (G York III)
• The Human Nervous System — A Clavichord? On the Use of Metaphors in the History of Modern Neurology (F Stahnisch)
• The Musician's Brain as a Model for Adaptive and Maladaptive Plasticity (E Altenmüller)
• Temporal Co-ordination of the Two Hands in Playing the Violin (M Wiesendanger)
• Music as a Calibrator of Time: Auditory Processing (S Jones)
• Musical Reading and Writing (J Brust)
• “Fools at Musick” — Thomas Willis on Congenital Amusia (M Lorch)
• Musicogenic Epilepsy (J Murray)
• Musical Hallucinations (S Evers)
• Alwa Glebe's Imitatio Nietzsche: On Elective Affinities between Migraine-Inspired Artists (K Podoll)
• Musical Palinacousis as an Aura Symptom in Persistent Aura Without Infarction (K Podoll)
• Coloured-Hearing Synaesthesia in Nineteenth-Century Italy (L Lorusso & A Porro)
• Crossed Wires: Synaesthetic Responses to Music (I Moseley)
• The Recognition of Music in Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (J Johnson)
• Maurice Ravel and the Music of the Brain (O Selnes)
• Cerebrovascular Disorders of Baroque Composers (T Breitenfeld et al.)
• From Sensibility to Madness in Late Nineteenth-Century Romanticism — Neurosyphillis in German-Speaking Composers (M Hennerici & H Bäzner);
• Singing: When It Helps (G Schlaug)
• Singing Improves Word-Production in Patients with Aphasia (G O Skeie et al.)
• Nerve Compression Syndromes in Musicians — A Surgeon's View (I Winspur)
• Focal Hand Dystonia Affecting Musicians (K Butler & K Rosenkranz)