Chris Higgins
How Brain Damage Reveals Brain Function
by Chris Higgins - June 24, 2009 - 1:46 PM

Vilayanur Ramachandran studies the brain. You may have seen a profile of him in last month’s New Yorker…if you haven’t get thee to a library and check it out! Anyway, Ramachandran is an interesting speaker — he spends a lot of time dealing with bizarre neurological problems (not his own, of course), and he makes neurology sound downright fascinating. Have a look at this TED Talk from 2007 in which he describes several puzzling neurological syndromes.

Discussed: how brain damage is very selective, mapping function to structure, capgras syndrome (face blindness), the capgras delusion (in which patients believes that their friends and family are bodysnatcher-style imposters), some digs at Freudians, phantom limb syndrome, the now-famous mirror box, phantom fingers on the shoulder (!), synesthesia, kiki and boobah.

« Previous Post   -   Next Post »
Click here to get a Risk-Free issue of mental_floss magazine
Comments (4)

  1. “he makes neurology sound downright fascinating” – that’s because it IS fascinating! What always suprises me is how people can present sleep-inducing seminars out of something so inherently wacked-out-bizzaro interesting. Love the TED talks, Chris!

    posted by Diana on 6-24-2009 at 3:43 pm

  2. OK, neurology is fascinating, but I’m not certain that you can say that most neurologists are fascinating.

    posted by John R on 6-25-2009 at 12:42 pm

  3. Radiolab had a great show with Ramachandran; the other segments about a butcher losing his sense of touch and fighter pilots having out-of-body experiences at certain G levels are also very interesting. Click my name for a link to the (free, streamable or downloadable) podcast.

    posted by Katie on 6-25-2009 at 2:34 pm

  4. If you like this type of thing read Oliver Sachs and Luria.

    posted by James on 6-30-2009 at 7:52 am

Comment

commenting policy