In 2011, a 66-year-old retired math teacher walked into a London neurological clinic hoping to get some answers. A few years earlier, she explained to the doctors, she had heard someone playing a piano outside her house. But then she realized there was no piano.

The phantom piano played longer and longer melodies, like passages from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 in C minor, her doctors recount in a recent study in the journal Cortex. By the time the woman – to whom the doctors refer only by her first name, Sylvia – came to the clinic, the music had become her nearly constant companion. Sylvia hoped the doctors could explain to her what was going on.
Sergei Rachmaninoff РPiano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18. Video by Wolfgang Amad̩ Mozart

Sylvia was experiencing a mysterious condition known as musical hallucinations. These are not pop songs that get stuck in your head. A musical hallucination can convince people there is a marching band in the next room, or a full church choir. Nor are musical hallucinations the symptoms of psychosis. People with musical hallucinations usually are psychologically normal – except for the songs they are sure someone is playing.

The […]