Musical Hallucinations: A Statistical Analysis of 46 Cases

Abstract

Musical hallucinations remain rare, are more common in women, and their onset is often related to ear pathology, particularly deafness. When brain disease is involved, pathology of the right or non-dominant hemisphere seems overrepresented. Psychosis and personality traits play a minimal role in their development. A discriminant function was constructed that correctly predicted the presence of brain disease (89%) and included the following clinical variables: being male, having acute onset musical hallucinations, and absence of deafness, psychiatric disease, and other forms of hallucination.

Musical hallucination associated with hearing loss

“…However, before such consensus was reached, this was considered to be a sample bias due to the fact that women are more likely than men to seek medical assistance, have a greater life expectancy. Besides, there is no evidence that epilepsy, deafness, tinnitus or brain tumor, which are all associated to musical hallucination, are more common in women 20 . Pathophysiology -Despite the fact that musical hallucination is more common in older patients, there are reports of this condition in young patients 12,28 , which can lead us to assume that musical hallucination may not be related to age, but to sensory deprivation.…”

“…Usualy brain lesions such as tumors, stroke or epileptic focus are usualy found in the right or non-dominant brain hemisphere of individuals with musical hallucination. This may suggest a dissociation from schizophrenia, since auditory hallucination in schizophrenic patients is related to left or dominant hemisphere lesions 20 . Other mechanisms were also reported.…”

“…Bibliographic review of musical hallucinosis in non-psychiatric patients has mostly identified case reports and few articles based on significant cases. Berrios et al have studied 46 cases, associated or not to auditory loss 20 and although their research should not be regarded with absolute certainty, it must be stressed that this is probably the largest survey sample used in the assessment of musical hallucinosis ever reported.…”

Musical hallucinations following insular glioma resection

“…Sporadic cases have been reported in patients with psychiatric, otorhinolaryngologic, or neurological problems. [1][2][3][4]6,[11][12][13][14][15][17][18][19][20] It has been assumed that the upper portion of the temporal lobe is the etiopathogenic substrate of this phenomenon. The functional imaging studies using the paradigm "listen to music" result in a bilateral activation of the brain.…”

“…5,7,22,23 This phenomenon will release previously stored perceptions and visual or auditory memories. 3,4 Release musical hallucinations occur mainly in the elderly with hearing deficiencies, mainly while awakening. The atypical antipsychotic drug quetiapine improved these symptoms in some patients.…”