A little background information.
In 1982 I was diagnosed with a disease called Neurofibromatosis type ll or NF2 for short.
The main symptoms of NF2 are tumors growing on the acoustic (hearing) nerve, which carries information about sound to the brain, and the vestibular nerve, which carries balance information to the brain. When they grow to big the tumors along with the acoustic nerve must be surgically removed, the results being deafness. To make a long, long story short, I lost my hearing on 1/27/85.
Fast forward to the late 90’s
I get on line and start coming across the many lyric site’s on the web. I was and still am amazed at how strong the music comes back to me when I read the words to songs. The problem is that there are many songs that I have lost the melody to. The titles are achingly familiar and I’m sure that if I could just hear a few notes I would remember the melody. But that’s not to be. So my question to you is, Does anyone out there know of any techniques, any tricks for retrieving lost memory?
Scents seem to have a sometimes amazing connection to memories. The smell of a freshly-cut lawn, or old hay takes me back to childhood memories pretty quick. This kind of thing is somewhat difficult to arrange deliberately, though.
It’s been my experience that keeping some form of dream journal, and in general working on improving dream recall in general, improves memory overall. Zero cites, just personal experience. My WAG runs that, since the neurological activity underlying dream state consists of a whole bunch of impulses firing pretty much randomly throughout the brain, exercising various connections, a dream can reestablish pointers to memories that haven’t been recalled for awhile; remembering the dream also, non-explicitly, remembers the pointers to the memories that hook up to the neural networks involved.
Journalizing in general helps you remember stuff. Both reading it later, and the very act of writing it down reinforces the storage and emotional importance of it–things with more emotional weight are remembered more easily than things you don’t much care for one way or the other.
I belong to a support group for people with NF2. Many in the group have implants (either the
Cochlear Implant or the more advanced ABI, Audio Brainstem Implant) that let them “hear” sounds, and I asked them the following question,
Say there was a song that you listened to often when you were hearing. You lose your hearing and forget the melody to the song. Could you play the song on a stereo and regain the melody?
This was the best response I got.
Hmmm I don’t think most of us can understand music. Like Catherine I used
to say “No all sounds the same” actually some things are very annoying. Just
a cacophony lotta noise. But I have found 2 things I do enjoy. You have to
remember the main thing, ABI is an electronic stimulation. What you
hear…sounds electronic. Everything does, yes there are different pitches in
the sounds we hear, but I have 8 channels working I hear 8 diff pitches.
It’s almost like an electric keyboard sound for me. If you say “Hi my name is
Jeff” it sounds like “zii zi zame ziz ziivv” lol. Okay saying that, the 2 things
I can enjoy are classical-if it’s more than one instrument has to be strings,
and also if it’s an orchestra has to be playing same melody. Hard to explain
there’s a well known song I can hear PERFECTLY (still electronic sounding,
but I hear the diff tunes in the melody anyways). I don’t know who it’s by or
the name and Ira doesn’t either. I need to find someone I can hum it to that
knows classical music. I’d like to get the CD. Also, my newest discovery I’m
so excited about. I’ve kind of dismissed music anything new esp. since going
deaf. I was at a friend’s house a while ago and he put on techno music. I
thought oh yuck I’ll hate it. I could hear the main beat, the rhythm bc I
guess techno music it starts out with one sound then another then another
just overlaps into music. Anyways I can hear the first sound just awesome
beat. Id tell ANYONE that has an ABI to try it just see if you can hear it
too :o) Let me know if it works for any of you!
Jeffro
This is interesting.
Can you feel the vibrations of a speaker and translate that to music???
I’ve noticed that a freshly blown up balloon seems to exagerate the vibrations when held against the cheek.
I wonder if you could learn to translate since you were once hearing.