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Available
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Publication
William Morrow Paperbacks (1999), 354 pages
Description
Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. Some of his most notable cases: A woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial. A man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be "wired" for religious experience? A woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time. Dr. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier -- the human mind -- yielding new and provocative insights into the "big questions" about consciousness and the self.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member koeniel
Who am I? At least once in his lifetime, everyone must have faced this question. It is a hard question to answer and this book shows that it is probably a lot more harder than we think. For this book shows that the idea of “I”, of “myself” is actually an illusion. It is something formed by
But it is exactly what Dr. Ramachandran, a prominent neuroscientist, tries to share with us in his book “Phantoms in the Brain”. Written together with Sandra Blakeslee the book describes Ramachandran’s encounters with patients, all with some sort of problems in their brains, which ironically, because of their defects, illuminate how our brains work. They show that actually there are many phantoms and zombies in our brains. We think they only take over when we are devoid of consciousness, but no, they are there with us every time, we’re just not aware of “them”.
The book has 12 chapters, each deals with different aspect of human brain. In Chapter 1 “The Phantom Within” he introduces the world of neuroscience. Chapter 2 “Knowing Where to Scratch” describes the cases of phantom limbs – where amputees actually feels and get all sorts of sensory input from their missing limbs, which is partly caused by the remapping of parts of the brain that originally deals with the sensory input from the limbs because it suddenly stopped getting the input. In Chapter 3 “Chasing the Phantom” Dr. Ramachandran further investigate the cases of phantom limbs. He actually discovered a therapy that helps trick their brains into rearranging the neurons and by that “accepting” that their limbs are gone.
Chapter 4 “The Zombie in the Brain” deals with the process of vision, which is actually not as simple as we thought it to be. Here he describes the case of Diane who due to carbon monoxide poisoning became blind. Diane can’t see things, can’t describe things. When she is shown a letter box she can’t describe what it was or how it was oriented. However when she is given a letter to slid into the letter box, immediately she orientate it parallel to the slot and slid the letter in. It’s like there’s a zombie, an unconscious part of Diane who guide her hands without her actually seeing the letter and the letter box. Through patients like her neuroscientists learn that the processing of vision in our brains in complex. To put it simple, there’s a “what” pathway that recognises things, forms and colours and assigns identifications to them. Then there’s a “how” pathway that deals with spatial positioning and orientating. The two pathways are located in different parts of the brain and a damage to one part doesn’t disturb the function of the other. Fascinating stuff! Chapter 5 “The Secret Life of James Thurber” still deals with vision. This time he explores the way our brain produces representations of the vision sensory inputs. Here we learn about our vision blind spots and how our brain tries to fill the gap to produce a complete picture. The chapter is filled with interesting pictures for experimenting and play around with our blind spots.
Chapter 6 “Through the Looking Glass” describes patients who because of some damage to their brains from stroke, experience a neglect of one side of their body, such that they don’t even realise that that side of the body exists. In Chapter 7 “The Sound of One Hand Clapping” describes cases of anosognosia where patients who are paralysed in some part of their body refuse to accept it such that they either belief that part of their body still work normally and unparalysed, or they even think that those parts do not belong to them. In Chapter 8 “The Unbearable Likeness of Being” Ramachandran delves into the cases of Capgras’ delusion where patients think that their loved ones are actually impostors.
Is there a God button in the brain? That part of the brain which helps human to experience a deeper meaning of things and feel the presence of a higher being? Is there a God gene? Ramachandran explores these questions in Chapter 9 “God and the Limbic System”. In Chapter 10 “The Woman Who Died Laughing” he explores the possible evolutionary roots of laughter and smiles. Chapter 11 “You Forgot to Deliver the Twin” investigates the relationship of mind and body and interactions between them.
The last chapter “Do Martians See Red?” looks into consciousness. While the other chapters are clear and relatively easy to understand, this one is – understandably, considering the tough subject - difficult. Here Ramachandran propose a way to explore consciousness, not from philosophical point of view, but from neuroscientific point of view. Even after reading it twice I can only understand less than 50% of what he says here.
However, apart from the last chapter the book is written in simple language that is relatively easy to understand. It is often quite humorous as well. The descriptions of patients and cases are what make the book so interesting.
Neuroscience seems to be the death toll to Freud. But Ramachandran doesn’t think so. He thinks that Freud is a genius at observing the problems of human mind. It is in the finding the causes of these problems that he failed, and it is where neuroscience now takes over.
After reading the book we are left to wonder – who am I? Are we just puppets controled by a bunch of neurotic neurons?
Show More
the acts of neurons in our brain. Hence when something happens to these wonderful cells our identity can change. “I” that I know it, could change into someone else. How scary is that.But it is exactly what Dr. Ramachandran, a prominent neuroscientist, tries to share with us in his book “Phantoms in the Brain”. Written together with Sandra Blakeslee the book describes Ramachandran’s encounters with patients, all with some sort of problems in their brains, which ironically, because of their defects, illuminate how our brains work. They show that actually there are many phantoms and zombies in our brains. We think they only take over when we are devoid of consciousness, but no, they are there with us every time, we’re just not aware of “them”.
The book has 12 chapters, each deals with different aspect of human brain. In Chapter 1 “The Phantom Within” he introduces the world of neuroscience. Chapter 2 “Knowing Where to Scratch” describes the cases of phantom limbs – where amputees actually feels and get all sorts of sensory input from their missing limbs, which is partly caused by the remapping of parts of the brain that originally deals with the sensory input from the limbs because it suddenly stopped getting the input. In Chapter 3 “Chasing the Phantom” Dr. Ramachandran further investigate the cases of phantom limbs. He actually discovered a therapy that helps trick their brains into rearranging the neurons and by that “accepting” that their limbs are gone.
Chapter 4 “The Zombie in the Brain” deals with the process of vision, which is actually not as simple as we thought it to be. Here he describes the case of Diane who due to carbon monoxide poisoning became blind. Diane can’t see things, can’t describe things. When she is shown a letter box she can’t describe what it was or how it was oriented. However when she is given a letter to slid into the letter box, immediately she orientate it parallel to the slot and slid the letter in. It’s like there’s a zombie, an unconscious part of Diane who guide her hands without her actually seeing the letter and the letter box. Through patients like her neuroscientists learn that the processing of vision in our brains in complex. To put it simple, there’s a “what” pathway that recognises things, forms and colours and assigns identifications to them. Then there’s a “how” pathway that deals with spatial positioning and orientating. The two pathways are located in different parts of the brain and a damage to one part doesn’t disturb the function of the other. Fascinating stuff! Chapter 5 “The Secret Life of James Thurber” still deals with vision. This time he explores the way our brain produces representations of the vision sensory inputs. Here we learn about our vision blind spots and how our brain tries to fill the gap to produce a complete picture. The chapter is filled with interesting pictures for experimenting and play around with our blind spots.
Chapter 6 “Through the Looking Glass” describes patients who because of some damage to their brains from stroke, experience a neglect of one side of their body, such that they don’t even realise that that side of the body exists. In Chapter 7 “The Sound of One Hand Clapping” describes cases of anosognosia where patients who are paralysed in some part of their body refuse to accept it such that they either belief that part of their body still work normally and unparalysed, or they even think that those parts do not belong to them. In Chapter 8 “The Unbearable Likeness of Being” Ramachandran delves into the cases of Capgras’ delusion where patients think that their loved ones are actually impostors.
Is there a God button in the brain? That part of the brain which helps human to experience a deeper meaning of things and feel the presence of a higher being? Is there a God gene? Ramachandran explores these questions in Chapter 9 “God and the Limbic System”. In Chapter 10 “The Woman Who Died Laughing” he explores the possible evolutionary roots of laughter and smiles. Chapter 11 “You Forgot to Deliver the Twin” investigates the relationship of mind and body and interactions between them.
The last chapter “Do Martians See Red?” looks into consciousness. While the other chapters are clear and relatively easy to understand, this one is – understandably, considering the tough subject - difficult. Here Ramachandran propose a way to explore consciousness, not from philosophical point of view, but from neuroscientific point of view. Even after reading it twice I can only understand less than 50% of what he says here.
However, apart from the last chapter the book is written in simple language that is relatively easy to understand. It is often quite humorous as well. The descriptions of patients and cases are what make the book so interesting.
Neuroscience seems to be the death toll to Freud. But Ramachandran doesn’t think so. He thinks that Freud is a genius at observing the problems of human mind. It is in the finding the causes of these problems that he failed, and it is where neuroscience now takes over.
After reading the book we are left to wonder – who am I? Are we just puppets controled by a bunch of neurotic neurons?
Show Less
LibraryThing member closedmouth
(Reviewed August 20, 2008)
A bit of a schizophrenic read. The first two thirds are dumbed-down to an amazing extent, and the last third tends to ramble. Rama has a very high opinion of his own views, and has a tendency to say things like "most scientists think this. Well, they're all wrong and I'll
A bit of a schizophrenic read. The first two thirds are dumbed-down to an amazing extent, and the last third tends to ramble. Rama has a very high opinion of his own views, and has a tendency to say things like "most scientists think this. Well, they're all wrong and I'll
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tell you why." But other than some of these hiccups in the prose, it's an interesting and intriguing book. Show Less
LibraryThing member Clueless
I found this book fascinating. Ramachandran is a neurologist who studies people with damaged brains to discover how healthy brains work.
Much of this book is taken up with the persistence of body image. He writes mostly of it in terms of phantom limbs but also with stroke victims who lose the use of
It appears that our brains are constantly trying to make things, stories and ourselves ‘whole’. And it’s not above using subterfuge for this. Freud names the following devices:
Denial, Repression, Reaction formation, Rationalization, Humor, Projection
These can be useful ways for our brains to value wholeness over the truth.
The book talks about patients with damage to the right parietal lobe which results in neglect of the left side.
Neglect stories are very popular with medical students. Oliver Sacks tells the strange tale of a woman who, like many left hemineglect patients, ate food only from the right side of her plate. But she knew what was up and realized that if she wanted all her dinner, she had to shift her head, so as to see the food on the left. But given her general indifference to the left and reluctance even to look to the left she adopted a comically ingenious solution. She rolled her wheelchair in a huge circle to the right, traveling 340 degrees or so until finally her eyes would fall on the uneaten food. That consumed, she’d make another rotation, to eat the remaining half of the food on her plate, and so on, round and round, until it was gone. It never occurred to her that she could just turn left—for her—the left simply didn’t exist.
Ramachandran mentions a way to strip one of ones delusions, albeit sometimes only temporarily.
There are people who deny that they are paralyzed. Ramachandran wondered if the truth about their disability was buried somewhere in their brains.
The experiments we discussed earlier suggest that a denial patient is not just trying to save face; the denial is anchored deep in her psyche. But doe this imply that the information about her paralysis is locked away somewhere—repressed? Or does it imply that the information doesn’t exist anywhere in her brain? The latter view seems unlikely. If the knowledge doesn’t exist, why does the patient say things like “I tied my shoelaces with both my hands” or “I can’t wait to get back to two-fisted beer drinking”? And why evasive remarks like “I’m not ambidextrous”? Comments like these imply that “somebody” in there knows she is paralyzed, but that the information is not available to the conscious mind. If so, is there some way to access that forbidden knowledge?
To find out we took advantage of an ingenious experiment preformed in 1987 by an Italian neurologist, Eduardo Bisiach, on a patient with neglect and denial. Bisiach took a syringe filled with ice-cold water and irrigated the patient’s left ear canal—a procedure that tests vestibular nerve function. Within a few seconds the patient’s eyes started to move vigorously in a process called nystagmus. The cold water sets up a convection current in the ear canals, thereby fooling the brain into thinking the head is moving and into making involuntary correctional eye movements that we call nystagmus. When Bisiach then asked the denial patient whether she could use her arms, she calmly replied that she had no use of her left arm! Amazingly, the cold water irrigation of the left ear had brought about a complete (though temporary) remission from the anosognosia.**
I also started wondering about anorexia nervosa. These patients have disturbances in appetite but are also delusional about their body image—claiming actually to “see” that they are fat when looking into a mirror, even though they are grotesquely thin. Is the disorder of appetite (linked to feeding and satiety centers in the hypothalamus) primarily, or does the body image distortion cause the appetite problem?
We know that certain parts of the limbic system such as the insular cortex are connected to the hypothalamic “appetite” centers and also to parts of the parietal lobes concerned with body image. Is it conceivable that how much you eat over a long period of time, your intellectual beliefs about whether you are too fat or thin, your perception of your body image and your appetite are all more closely linked in your brain that you realize—so that a distortion of one of the these systems can lead to a pervasive disturbance in the others as well?
People have become increasingly inpatient with Western medicine’s sterility and lack of compassion, and this would explain the current resurgence of “alternative medicine”. But unfortunately, even though the remedies touted by new Age gurus have a ring of plausibility, they are rarely subjected to rigorous tests. We have no idea which ones (if any) work and which ones do not, although even the hardened skeptic would agree that there is probably something interesting going on. If we are to make any headway, we need to test these claims carefully and explore the brain mechanisms that underlie such effects. …Until we have clear answers, to these questions, Western medicine and alternative medicine will always remain parallel enterprises with no point of contact between them.
So with all this evidence starting them in the face, why do practitioners of Western medicine continue to ignore the many striking examples of direct links between mind and body?
To understand why, it helps to have a feel for how scientific knowledge progresses. Most of the day-to-day progress of science depends on simply adding another brick to the great edifice—a rather humdrum activity that the late historian Thomas Kuhn called “normal science”. This corpus of knowledge, incorporated a number of widely accepted beliefs, is, in each instance, called a “paradigm.” Year after year new observations come along and are assimilated into an existing standard model. Most scientists are bricklayers, not architects; they are happy simply adding another stone to the cathedral.
Ironically, after extensive training in Western medicine and more than fifteen years of research on neurological patients and visual illusions, I have come to realize that there is much truth to the view—that the notion of a single unified self “inhabiting” the brain may indeed be an illusion. …(as has long been emphasized by Eastern mystical traditions like Hinduism and Zen Buddhism). Once you realize that far from being a spectator, you are in fact part of the eternal ebb and flow of events in the cosmos, this realization is very liberating.
** anosognosia-the inability to perceive that one side of one’s own body is paralyzed
Much of this book is taken up with the persistence of body image. He writes mostly of it in terms of phantom limbs but also with stroke victims who lose the use of
Show More
something on one side of their body.It appears that our brains are constantly trying to make things, stories and ourselves ‘whole’. And it’s not above using subterfuge for this. Freud names the following devices:
Denial, Repression, Reaction formation, Rationalization, Humor, Projection
These can be useful ways for our brains to value wholeness over the truth.
The book talks about patients with damage to the right parietal lobe which results in neglect of the left side.
Neglect stories are very popular with medical students. Oliver Sacks tells the strange tale of a woman who, like many left hemineglect patients, ate food only from the right side of her plate. But she knew what was up and realized that if she wanted all her dinner, she had to shift her head, so as to see the food on the left. But given her general indifference to the left and reluctance even to look to the left she adopted a comically ingenious solution. She rolled her wheelchair in a huge circle to the right, traveling 340 degrees or so until finally her eyes would fall on the uneaten food. That consumed, she’d make another rotation, to eat the remaining half of the food on her plate, and so on, round and round, until it was gone. It never occurred to her that she could just turn left—for her—the left simply didn’t exist.
Ramachandran mentions a way to strip one of ones delusions, albeit sometimes only temporarily.
There are people who deny that they are paralyzed. Ramachandran wondered if the truth about their disability was buried somewhere in their brains.
The experiments we discussed earlier suggest that a denial patient is not just trying to save face; the denial is anchored deep in her psyche. But doe this imply that the information about her paralysis is locked away somewhere—repressed? Or does it imply that the information doesn’t exist anywhere in her brain? The latter view seems unlikely. If the knowledge doesn’t exist, why does the patient say things like “I tied my shoelaces with both my hands” or “I can’t wait to get back to two-fisted beer drinking”? And why evasive remarks like “I’m not ambidextrous”? Comments like these imply that “somebody” in there knows she is paralyzed, but that the information is not available to the conscious mind. If so, is there some way to access that forbidden knowledge?
To find out we took advantage of an ingenious experiment preformed in 1987 by an Italian neurologist, Eduardo Bisiach, on a patient with neglect and denial. Bisiach took a syringe filled with ice-cold water and irrigated the patient’s left ear canal—a procedure that tests vestibular nerve function. Within a few seconds the patient’s eyes started to move vigorously in a process called nystagmus. The cold water sets up a convection current in the ear canals, thereby fooling the brain into thinking the head is moving and into making involuntary correctional eye movements that we call nystagmus. When Bisiach then asked the denial patient whether she could use her arms, she calmly replied that she had no use of her left arm! Amazingly, the cold water irrigation of the left ear had brought about a complete (though temporary) remission from the anosognosia.**
I also started wondering about anorexia nervosa. These patients have disturbances in appetite but are also delusional about their body image—claiming actually to “see” that they are fat when looking into a mirror, even though they are grotesquely thin. Is the disorder of appetite (linked to feeding and satiety centers in the hypothalamus) primarily, or does the body image distortion cause the appetite problem?
We know that certain parts of the limbic system such as the insular cortex are connected to the hypothalamic “appetite” centers and also to parts of the parietal lobes concerned with body image. Is it conceivable that how much you eat over a long period of time, your intellectual beliefs about whether you are too fat or thin, your perception of your body image and your appetite are all more closely linked in your brain that you realize—so that a distortion of one of the these systems can lead to a pervasive disturbance in the others as well?
People have become increasingly inpatient with Western medicine’s sterility and lack of compassion, and this would explain the current resurgence of “alternative medicine”. But unfortunately, even though the remedies touted by new Age gurus have a ring of plausibility, they are rarely subjected to rigorous tests. We have no idea which ones (if any) work and which ones do not, although even the hardened skeptic would agree that there is probably something interesting going on. If we are to make any headway, we need to test these claims carefully and explore the brain mechanisms that underlie such effects. …Until we have clear answers, to these questions, Western medicine and alternative medicine will always remain parallel enterprises with no point of contact between them.
So with all this evidence starting them in the face, why do practitioners of Western medicine continue to ignore the many striking examples of direct links between mind and body?
To understand why, it helps to have a feel for how scientific knowledge progresses. Most of the day-to-day progress of science depends on simply adding another brick to the great edifice—a rather humdrum activity that the late historian Thomas Kuhn called “normal science”. This corpus of knowledge, incorporated a number of widely accepted beliefs, is, in each instance, called a “paradigm.” Year after year new observations come along and are assimilated into an existing standard model. Most scientists are bricklayers, not architects; they are happy simply adding another stone to the cathedral.
Ironically, after extensive training in Western medicine and more than fifteen years of research on neurological patients and visual illusions, I have come to realize that there is much truth to the view—that the notion of a single unified self “inhabiting” the brain may indeed be an illusion. …(as has long been emphasized by Eastern mystical traditions like Hinduism and Zen Buddhism). Once you realize that far from being a spectator, you are in fact part of the eternal ebb and flow of events in the cosmos, this realization is very liberating.
** anosognosia-the inability to perceive that one side of one’s own body is paralyzed
Show Less
LibraryThing member manick
Good book on brain function. Lucid writting and wonderful style.
LibraryThing member Benthamite
Abnormal syndromes illustrate fundamental principles that govern the way human minds and brains work, shedding light on body image, language, laughter, dreams, depression and other aspects of our nature.
LibraryThing member tronella
This book, written by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, suggests that by looking at case studies of individuals with particular types of brain injuries we can learn a lot about the the human mind. He looks at examples of patients with phantom limb syndrome, vision problems, paralysis and other
I found this very interesting to read, with descriptions of both symptoms and anatomy being very clear and easy to follow, although it is a little repetitive in places. However, although I know very little about neurology myself, I found some of his theories hard to swallow - it was often unclear if he was neglecting to mention the evidence he had to back them or if there was no evidence at all. I am particularly skeptical of his explanations for foot-fetishes and anorexia.
A quote which I think sums up Ramachandran's view of the brain well: "Freud's most valuable contribution was his discovery that your conscious mind is simply a facade and that you are completely unaware of 90 percent of what really goes on in your brain."
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problems and uses his understanding of their neurological (physiological) causes to speculate on their implications about the structure and functioning of a "normal" human brain.I found this very interesting to read, with descriptions of both symptoms and anatomy being very clear and easy to follow, although it is a little repetitive in places. However, although I know very little about neurology myself, I found some of his theories hard to swallow - it was often unclear if he was neglecting to mention the evidence he had to back them or if there was no evidence at all. I am particularly skeptical of his explanations for foot-fetishes and anorexia.
A quote which I think sums up Ramachandran's view of the brain well: "Freud's most valuable contribution was his discovery that your conscious mind is simply a facade and that you are completely unaware of 90 percent of what really goes on in your brain."
Show Less
LibraryThing member GlennBell
This was an excellent book. The author has an ability to derive interesting concepts and tests from case studies. He is insightful and logical. Some concepts discussed are theoretical but are worthy of further investigation. I was not aware of some of the odd cases that he described. I recommend
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the book for those who are interested in neuroscience. Show Less
LibraryThing member bragan
Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran introduces us to patients who have suffered deeply strange effects from damage to various parts of their brains, from an inability to recognize or admit that their arm or leg is paralyzed, to the conviction that their loved ones have been replaced by impostors, to
I already knew about the various pathologies he's describing, having done a fair bit of reading already on the subject of the human brain, so I was a little worried, going in, that I might find it all kind of old hat. (Or old The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, maybe.) But instead I was absolutely fascinated, because brains are just absolutely wonderful and weird, and Ramachandran vividly illustrates just how weird they can get. Plus also sort of terrified, because thinking too hard about this stuff forces you to face some really unsettling implications about the nature of the self and what can happen to it. There were a lot of ideas in here that were new to me, too, as they seem to be very much Ramachandran's own. Mind you, a lot of those ideas are clearly very speculative, not to mention possibly being out of date, as this book was published nearly twenty years ago. And Ramachandran seems to combine some impressively keen scientific thinking with a tendency to perhaps be a little too open minded about some less scientific ideas. But it was all really, really thought-provoking, nonetheless.
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becoming ultra-religious in the wake of certain kinds of seizures. He also talks extensively about phantom limbs, a subject he's done a lot of research on. He describes what we know about what's going on in the brains of these people, the many unanswered questions that still remain, his ideas for experiments to help answer some of those questions, and his big-picture thoughts on what it all means for how our brains and our minds function.I already knew about the various pathologies he's describing, having done a fair bit of reading already on the subject of the human brain, so I was a little worried, going in, that I might find it all kind of old hat. (Or old The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, maybe.) But instead I was absolutely fascinated, because brains are just absolutely wonderful and weird, and Ramachandran vividly illustrates just how weird they can get. Plus also sort of terrified, because thinking too hard about this stuff forces you to face some really unsettling implications about the nature of the self and what can happen to it. There were a lot of ideas in here that were new to me, too, as they seem to be very much Ramachandran's own. Mind you, a lot of those ideas are clearly very speculative, not to mention possibly being out of date, as this book was published nearly twenty years ago. And Ramachandran seems to combine some impressively keen scientific thinking with a tendency to perhaps be a little too open minded about some less scientific ideas. But it was all really, really thought-provoking, nonetheless.
Show Less
LibraryThing member tronella
This book, written by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, suggests that by looking at case studies of individuals with particular types of brain injuries we can learn a lot about the the human mind. He looks at examples of patients with phantom limb syndrome, vision problems, paralysis and other
I found this very interesting to read, with descriptions of both symptoms and anatomy being very clear and easy to follow, although it is a little repetitive in places. However, although I know very little about neurology myself, I found some of his theories hard to swallow - it was often unclear if he was neglecting to mention the evidence he had to back them or if there was no evidence at all. I am particularly skeptical of his explanations for foot-fetishes and anorexia.
A quote which I think sums up Ramachandran's view of the brain well: "Freud's most valuable contribution was his discovery that your conscious mind is simply a facade and that you are completely unaware of 90 percent of what really goes on in your brain."
Show More
problems and uses his understanding of their neurological (physiological) causes to speculate on their implications about the structure and functioning of a "normal" human brain.I found this very interesting to read, with descriptions of both symptoms and anatomy being very clear and easy to follow, although it is a little repetitive in places. However, although I know very little about neurology myself, I found some of his theories hard to swallow - it was often unclear if he was neglecting to mention the evidence he had to back them or if there was no evidence at all. I am particularly skeptical of his explanations for foot-fetishes and anorexia.
A quote which I think sums up Ramachandran's view of the brain well: "Freud's most valuable contribution was his discovery that your conscious mind is simply a facade and that you are completely unaware of 90 percent of what really goes on in your brain."
Show Less
LibraryThing member Razinha
In 2012, for the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, New Scientist held a contest for its readers to vote for a curated list of what it called the 25 Most Influential Popular Science books. I resolved to eventually read all of them and after a couple year hiatus,
I’m not sure why it was on the list. It reads popular science enough but …
Dr. Ramachandran says “Another perverse streak of mine is that I've always been drawn to the exception rather than to the rule in every science that I've studied.”
That turns out to be a good thing because how often do disorders/syndromes/damage tell us things about “normal” functions? Quite a bit, if never enough. That is what this book is about and if abnormal gets your juices flowing, then this is for you.
I like this: “There is something distinctly odd about a hairless neotenous primate that has evolved into a species that can look back over its own shoulder and ask questions about its origins. “
And I wish I knew more doctors who approached diagnosis/treatment with “Finally, when studying and treating a patient, it is the physician's duty always to ask himself, ‘What does it feel like to be in the patient's shoes?’ ‘What if I were?’ "
[on “seeing”] “So the first step in understanding perception is to get rid of the idea of images in the brain and to begin thinking about symbolic descriptions of objects and events in the external world. “
[Candid honesty get a star bump] “People often assume that science is serious business, that it is always "theory driven," that you generate lofty conjectures based on what you already know and then proceed to design experiments specifically to test these conjectures. Actually real science is more like a fishing expedition than most of my colleagues would care to admit. “
He has a sense of humor: “The hypothalamus can be regarded, then, as the "brain" of this archaic, ancillary nervous system. The third output drives actual behaviors, often remembered by the mnemonic the "four F's" fighting, fleeing, feeding and sexual behavior. “
But he loses major points with: “Contrary to what many of my colleagues believe, the message preached by physicians like Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil is not just New Age psychobabble.”
Mentioning the two cranks is bad enough. Giving either credit for anything drops this a star down from the bump. Calling it 2.5 rounded down.
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this makes number 17 for me. I’m not sure why it was on the list. It reads popular science enough but …
Dr. Ramachandran says “Another perverse streak of mine is that I've always been drawn to the exception rather than to the rule in every science that I've studied.”
That turns out to be a good thing because how often do disorders/syndromes/damage tell us things about “normal” functions? Quite a bit, if never enough. That is what this book is about and if abnormal gets your juices flowing, then this is for you.
I like this: “There is something distinctly odd about a hairless neotenous primate that has evolved into a species that can look back over its own shoulder and ask questions about its origins. “
And I wish I knew more doctors who approached diagnosis/treatment with “Finally, when studying and treating a patient, it is the physician's duty always to ask himself, ‘What does it feel like to be in the patient's shoes?’ ‘What if I were?’ "
[on “seeing”] “So the first step in understanding perception is to get rid of the idea of images in the brain and to begin thinking about symbolic descriptions of objects and events in the external world. “
[Candid honesty get a star bump] “People often assume that science is serious business, that it is always "theory driven," that you generate lofty conjectures based on what you already know and then proceed to design experiments specifically to test these conjectures. Actually real science is more like a fishing expedition than most of my colleagues would care to admit. “
He has a sense of humor: “The hypothalamus can be regarded, then, as the "brain" of this archaic, ancillary nervous system. The third output drives actual behaviors, often remembered by the mnemonic the "four F's" fighting, fleeing, feeding and sexual behavior. “
But he loses major points with: “Contrary to what many of my colleagues believe, the message preached by physicians like Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil is not just New Age psychobabble.”
Mentioning the two cranks is bad enough. Giving either credit for anything drops this a star down from the bump. Calling it 2.5 rounded down.
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Awards
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Science & Technology — 1998)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1998
Physical description
354 p.; 5.91 inches
ISBN
9780688172176