Researchers at the Loyola University Medical Center have reported the first known case of a patient hallucinating music that was familiar to people around her, but that she herself did not recognize.

Musical hallucinations are a form of auditory hallucinations, in which patients hear songs, instrumental music or tunes, even though no such music is actually playing. Most patients realize they are hallucinating, and find the music intrusive and occasionally unpleasant.

Musical hallucinations usually occur in older people. Several conditions are possible causes or predisposing factors, including hearing impairment, brain damage, epilepsy, intoxications and psychiatric disorders such as depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Dr Danilo Vitorovic and Dr José Biller have described a 60-year-old hearing-impaired woman who initially hallucinated music when she was trying to fall asleep.

One night when the patient was trying to fall asleep, she suddenly began hearing music, as if a radio were playing at the back of her head. The songs were popular tunes her husband recognized when she sang or hummed them. But she herself could not identify them.

“The case raises intriguing questions regarding memory, forgetting and access to lost memories,” Dr Vitorovic and Dr José Biller, who described this unique case in the journal Frontiers in Neurology.

Within four months, the patient was hearing music all the time. For example, she would hear one song over and over for three weeks, then another song would begin playing. The volume never changed, and she was able to hear and follow conversations while hallucinating the music.

“The patient was treated with carbamazepine, an anti-seizure drug, and experienced some improvement in her symptoms.”

The unique feature of the patient was her ability to hum parts of some tunes and recall bits of lyrics from some songs that she did not even recognize. This raises the possibility that the songs were buried in her memory, but she could not access them except when she was hallucinating.

“Further research is necessary on the mechanisms of forgetfulness. In other words, is forgotten information lost, or just not accessible?” the scientists said.

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Bibliographic information: Vitorovic D and Biller J. 2013. Musical hallucinations and forgotten tunes – case report and brief literature review. Front. Neurol., 4: 109; doi: 10.3389/fneur.2013.00109