Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory

"Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory," is a story of hope.  The captivating documentary follows social worker Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit organization Music & Memory, as he fights against a broken healthcare system to demonstrate music's ability to combat memory loss and restore a deep sense of self to those suffering from it.

Filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett chronicles the astonishing experiences of individuals around the country who have been revitalized through the simple experience of listening to music. His camera reveals the uniquely human connection we find in music and how its healing power can triumph where prescription medication falls short.

When Sound and Touch Collide: A Little Synesthesia Exists in All of Us

Everyone knows the feeling -  the chills when you hear that one song, or the painful shivering at the sound of nails against a chalkboard.   Now, imagine if your body continuously heard sound through its skin.

Sherrilyn Roush is the first reported individual to have developed this form of synesthesia, a neurological mix-up of senses, after a stroke that left her numb in the left side of her body.  Researcher Tony Ro was lucky enough to study her incredible anomaly, and his theoretical findings are monumental.  He believes sense of hearing may have evolved from a sense of feeling, and that Roush’s merging of sound and touch is just an exaggerated version of what happens in all of our brains. Although speculative, it’s possible that what scientists now interpret as a merger of sound and touch might actually be a reflection of an earlier state in which the two senses were one.

Read the extraordinary story that led to this theory, here.

Why Some Cultures Don't 'Mind' Auditory Hallucinations

An auditory hallucination is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without auditory stimulus.  Although an alluding stigma of mental disorders may cause you to think that auditory hallucinations rarely stray from harsh and threatening, 'voice-hearing' can be quite the contrary. 

A new study suggests that schizophrenic people in more collectivist societies sometimes think their auditory hallucinations are helpful. Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful. This may have clinical implications for how to treat people with schizophrenia, she suggests.