The Case of Clive Wearing
Oliver Sacks, Professor of Clinical Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University, has extensively researched how music relates to memory and memory disorders and shares his findings in his book, Musicophilia. Clive Wearing, for example, is someone he worked with in terms of understanding amnesia and music. Clive was an English musician and musicologist until 1989, when he unfortunately suffered from a brain infection, herpes encephalitis, which affected memory in his brain. Wearing can only (he is still alive today) remember things for a few seconds, so he cannot form new memories and only retains his short term memories for about a few seconds. His wife, Deborah wrote, "Each blink, each glance away and back, brought him an entirely new view." Clive cannot form new memories, but he also has retrograde amnesia, which means he cannot remember his past. It was originally clear that his state did not make him cheerful (as Ten Second Tom in "50 First Dates" seems to be), but instead, he was constantly afraid and conscious that something horrible was going on. He believes that every few seconds he is coming out of a state of unconsciousness. Deborah wrote that he would say "I haven't heard anything, seen anything, touched anything, smelled anything...It's like being dead."
In an attempt to hold onto his memories, Clive started a journal, where he would write whenever he "woke up," so most entries would say "I am awake" or "I am conscious," which would be entered in every few minutes. He would cross out every entry before the current one he would be writing because he did not think they were authentic. Clive always believes he has been "awakened" from being dead.
Fortunately, efforts were made to try and get Clive's memory working. Seven years after the onset of his illness, Clive moved into a country home for the brain injured. He could take walks around the village, enjoy home-cooked food, and have experiences not available in a hospital. Deborah said he became more sociable, and cheerful.
In 2005, 20 years after he originally got sick, Dr. Sacks went to meet Clive. He was very happy to see him, and he had changed so much from the beginning of his condition, documented on film. Clive seemed to remember memories in connection to music, such as joining the London Sinfonietta in 1968. However, they could have just reflected his knowledge of the events, which would be expressions of semantic memory rather than episodic memory. He could play music, as Dr. Sacks asked him to play something, and as he played a Prelude, he said "I remember this one." It seemed that music did bring back some fragment of memory. He could also remember who is wife was whenever she entered the room, meaning that their love has been deeply imbedded into him, so his amnesia cannot destroy
this love. Music will always be engraved into his self, though as Deborah wrote to Dr. Sacks, "Clive's at-homeness in music and in his love for me are where he transcends amnesia and finds continuum, where Clive, and any of us, are finally, where we are who we are."
This one case of Clive reveals how music can transcend brain injuries, and I also learned this from working with the residents at the Wartburg. Music can eclipse any injury and invigorate one's emotions.
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