John Brust: Playing Jazz to the Rhythms of the Brain

One day in the summer of 1977, sitting at a piano in a practice room of the Manhattan School of Music, neurologist John C.M. Brust carried out a highly unusual neurological examination. His patient that day was Kathy Morris, a student in her early 20s who had abruptly lost her ability to understand music.For some people, that condition, known as amusia, wouldn’t be terribly disabling, and perhaps might never even be noticed. But Morris was a fourth-year voice student at the Manhattan School. Music was her passion.Her troubles had begun a year earlier, when she had surgery to get rid of a lemon-sized tumor from the left side of her brain. The operation did not go well. Her brain mysteriously swelled during surgery, most likely due to a stroke. The resulting tissue damage left her in the hospital for weeks, and for the rest of her life she had trouble speaking, reading and writing. Her musical literacy was similarly impaired: though she still enjoyed listening to music and singing, she could no longer read or write it.Read more at...Taft Bulletin, Winter 2014.