Is it possible for a deaf person to imagine a song?

[tribdog]

Wouldn't it depend on why they were death? If they're missing the necessary parts of the brain, then no. But if it's just an ear problem, then it's entirely possible they can imagine (really simple) sounds.

Have they ever put a cochlear implant on someone who was death from birth?

somebody just has to fix this oxymoron. Someone cannot be death from birth.
deaf yes, death no.

 

[Yonoz]

somebody just has to fix this oxymoron. Someone cannot be death from birth.
deaf yes, death no.

There's an episode of the psychedelic show "The Prisoner" called "The girl who was death".
So there.

 

[Rade]

Time to let those totally deaf answer the OP question:

1. Shawn Barnett, born totally deaf:
http://www.workersforjesus.com/dfi/834.htm

2. ...By the age of 40, Beethoven could no longer perform as a pianist and in 1822, at the age of 52, he was totally deaf. Beethoven became even MORE temperamental and furious and channeled all his anger into his music. The Greatest Composition in Musical History, Beethoven's SYMPHONY #9 "THE CHORAL" (1824) was composed when he was TOTALLY DEAF!... (from internet)

“There begins in my head the development in every direction … the fundamental idea never deserts me - it rises before me - grows, I see and hear the picture in all its extent and dimensions stand before my mind like a cast …“ Ludwig Van Beethoven

3. From website of Maestro Lorin Maazel:

"I once conducted a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London for the benefit of a school for deaf children, where, unbelievably, music is an integral part of the educational program. To display their skills, an hour before the concert was to be performed, the children from the school, all hearing-impaired, performed a musical program in the foyer of the hall. Their rhythm was impeccable, the tone quality delightful - I remember a 12-year-old flutist with a lovely vibrato - and the performance beyond reproach. Though partially and in most instances totally deaf, they had nevertheless been taught to "hear" music. The vibrations produced by the instruments were picked up from the wooden floor through the soles of their feet! Thus, they were in a position to adjust the intonation, monitor the rhythm and be aware of the sounds produced by their classmates. But above all, performing music required them to engage actively in a learning process that sharpened their awareness of themselves and helped motivate them to face life"

4. And here--the science:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/11/011128035455.htm

 

[zoobyshoe]

3. From website of Maestro Lorin Maazel:

"I once conducted a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London for the benefit of a school for deaf children, where, unbelievably, music is an integral part of the educational program. To display their skills, an hour before the concert was to be performed, the children from the school, all hearing-impaired, performed a musical program in the foyer of the hall. Their rhythm was impeccable, the tone quality delightful - I remember a 12-year-old flutist with a lovely vibrato - and the performance beyond reproach. Though partially and in most instances totally deaf, they had nevertheless been taught to "hear" music. The vibrations produced by the instruments were picked up from the wooden floor through the soles of their feet! Thus, they were in a position to adjust the intonation, monitor the rhythm and be aware of the sounds produced by their classmates. But above all, performing music required them to engage actively in a learning process that sharpened their awareness of themselves and helped motivate them to face life"

4. And here--the science:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/11/011128035455.htm

These latter two examples are the relevant ones. These demonstrate that the deaf can distinguish between tones above bass notes, by sense of touch alone, and could, therefore, compose a melody.

Back to the OP:

I know if he reads them, then he can see that they have to have a pattern and in that sense, he can come up w/ them but can he come up w/ songs that he can feel?

As I said before, I take the "songs that he can feel" to mean music that moves him emotionally as it does us, as opposed to intellectually grasping and reproducing a pattern. Would a deaf person pick up a flute and compose a vibration composition for the pleasure of it, or is this ability to play something they do because it's part of the curriculum like math and whatever other subjects they're required to take?

When I was in grade school we were pushed and trained daily to acquire perfect penmanship in preparation for the National Penmanship Contest. As it turned out, we won first place out of every school in the country that entered. Yet, not one kid in my class enjoyed penmanship. At best it was "a learning process that sharpened their awareness of themselves and helped motivate them to face life."

So, the question in my mind, still, is whether or not music by sense of touch is emotionally moving the way music by sense of hearing is.

The deaf drummer is exclusively dealing with rhythm. That is much more accessible to touch and the feeling of hitting a drum is quite satisfying. I'm sure the experience of playing drums could be as emotionally moving to a deaf person as it is to a hearing person.

Beethoven doesn't count here at all because he did all his developing as a hearing person, and was writing "deaf", that is: in his head, well before he actually went deaf. Any decent composer can do this. Mozart also composed in his head, in his imagination, and wrote things down later. There's a bazillion people alive today who can do this. It's part of music training to know in your head what an interval sounds like. What Beethoven lost after going deaf was the ability to confirm how his compositions sounded and his confidence in performing them himself.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

Yeh songs that he can 'feel'. As for the title of this thread, imagine the correct perception and result from the stimulus of sound waves on your ears? No.

 

[Midas]

This is a really interesting discussion with much intelligent debate and just one problem: deaf people can (and do) experience auditory hallucinations. Even people deaf from birth. It happens in schizophrenia and other conditions, and there are a lot of studies published on the subject. As to how it can happen... well, that's why there are so many studies! You'd think it was impossible, and there is debate about it amongst the psychologists and neurologists (are these hallucinations or pseudo-hallucinations; are patients reporting hallucinations of people speaking or are we misinterpreting what they are telling us: that sort of thing)...but the simple reality is, for more than 40 years I have been working with the mentally ill, and I regularly encounter profoundly deaf people who hear voices!

 

[hypnagogue]

This is a really interesting discussion with much intelligent debate and just one problem: deaf people can (and do) experience auditory hallucinations. Even people deaf from birth. It happens in schizophrenia and other conditions, and there are a lot of studies published on the subject. As to how it can happen... well, that's why there are so many studies! You'd think it was impossible, and there is debate about it amongst the psychologists and neurologists (are these hallucinations or pseudo-hallucinations; are patients reporting hallucinations of people speaking or are we misinterpreting what they are telling us: that sort of thing)...but the simple reality is, for more than 40 years I have been working with the mentally ill, and I regularly encounter profoundly deaf people who hear voices!

Are these people deaf from birth? If yes, how do you know that it is really an auditory hallucination? What studies are you referring to?

 

[zoobyshoe]

This is a really interesting discussion with much intelligent debate and just one problem: deaf people can (and do) experience auditory hallucinations. Even people deaf from birth. It happens in schizophrenia and other conditions, and there are a lot of studies published on the subject. As to how it can happen... well, that's why there are so many studies! You'd think it was impossible, and there is debate about it amongst the psychologists and neurologists (are these hallucinations or pseudo-hallucinations; are patients reporting hallucinations of people speaking or are we misinterpreting what they are telling us: that sort of thing)...but the simple reality is, for more than 40 years I have been working with the mentally ill, and I regularly encounter profoundly deaf people who hear voices!

In his book Seeing Voices, Neurologist Oliver Sacks has a long footnote about this on page 6. It's too long to quote here but he posits that the manner in which the deaf experience hallucinations of "voices" is quite different than what the hearing experience just as the interior monolog of the deaf is different than that of the hearing:

"Clayton Valli, a deaf sign poet, when a poem is coming to him, feels his own body making little signs-he is, as it were, speaking to himself, in his own voice."

A person born deaf would quite simply not understand any spoken language if they could suddenly hear, or if they had an accurate hallucination of the sound of spoken language. What the deaf-from-birth experience when they have the hallucination of being addressed by disembodied "voices" is certainly, therefore, the hallucination of the physical and mental and emotional reactions they have to being communicated with by sign language or lip reading without the accompanying visuals. Sacks says they don't claim to actually see disembodied hands signing or lips moving, and the deaf who experience these hallucinations are hard pressed to explain what it is they actually are experiencing, but, since they understand what's being said to them, and often sign back to the hallucinations addressing them, we can be sure they are not experiencing the hallucination of sound. There is no sound based language they are in a position to understand. Occasionally you run across mention of hearing psychotics who hallucinate the sound of people speaking in a foreign language they don't understand, and, they don't, indeed, understand what's being said.

Sign language isn't what you might suppose it is. It has a vital spatial component that spoken language does not:

The essential grammatical information of American Sign Langauge (ASL) is conveyed through changes in the movement and spatial contouring of the hands and arms.

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=801139&coll=portal&dl=ACM#abstract

I saw Ursula Beluggi, one of the authors of that paper, and a pioneer researcher in how the brain processes sign language, interviewed on television a few years back, and she emphasized how the nuances of sign are essentially spatial. It is not a word for word analog of spoken language and how a sign speaker treats and manipulates the space in which they sign is, she says, a vital component of what is said.

That being the case, when the deaf experience the hallucination of being addressed we have to assume this includes the reception of spatial imformation, the physical feeling of spatial relationships, that hearing people just don't experience and which a deaf psychotic would be hard pressed to explain to a hearing person.