Condiciones neuropsiquiátricas y probable causa de muerte de Maurice Ravel

The renowned French composer and musician, Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) exhibited a perplexing case of progressive degenerative neu-rological symptoms, namely amnesia, aphasia, apraxia, amusia, and alexia. The symptoms started when Ravel was only fairly young, at 57, five years prior to his death in 1937. He was surgically intervened in what was known then as an exploratory craniotomy and passed away. There are a number of publications in which his life and known medi-cal history were dissected and analyzed in an attempt to diagnose the ailment that Ravel suffered. Many diagnoses have been considered, among them Alzheimer’s disease, Pick Disease, primary progressive aphasia, corticobasal degeneration, and complications of head injury following a car crash in 1932. Since an autopsy was not performed, an exact diagnosis is rather unlikely, and no one has been able to confirm
342IATREIA Vol 35(3) julio-septiembre 2022or deny any of the aforementioned hypotheses. The authors conducted an extensive revision of existent literature and propose some original ideas regarding Ravel’s neurological condition, mainly the psycholo-gical impact of Ravel’s life and experiences and the way they may have influenced his musical genius.