V.S. Ramachandran, Neuroscientist is internationally renowned for opening answers to the puzzling questions of human nature that few scientists have ever dared. His creative insights about the brain is matched by the acute simplicity of in-situ experiments - such as use of low-tech tools like cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors and cardboard.
A phantom is an un-real feeling that exists in the humans after the loss of organs like hand, its fingers or legs. People feel that it is there whereas, actually it does not exist. In 'Phantoms in the Brain - probing the mysteries of 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 these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image (with conciousness having roots in one's culture), 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 include:
#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 has lost his forearm feels an excruciating pain in the palm of his hands with nails-biting it, gets a lease of life with simple box and mirror experiment. All in just a week and this after the patient has had visited several neurosurgeons and given-up.
#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.
#Another women who sees her stomach swelling feels that she is pregnant and which continues for nine-months. She even goes to hospital for delivery (with swollen stomach and no baby). This doc arranges a big baby-size toy and sedates the woman during 'delivery' only to disclose to her later that the baby died after delivery. Reconciled, she even returns home with 'birthmarks' over the stomach!
#A piece of your brain the size of a grain of sand would contain one hundred thousand neurons, two million axons and one billion synapses, all "talking to" each other.
# Pain is an opinion on the organism's state of health rather than a mere reflective response to an injury. There is no direct hotline from pain receptors to "pain centers" in the brain.
#The mechanisms of perception are mainly involved in extracting statistical correlations from the world to create a model that is temporarily useful.
#One could argue that the term consciousness doesn't mean anything unless you recognize the emotional significance and semantic associations of what you are looking at.
#Every medical student is taught that patients with epileptic seizures originating in this part of the brain [temporal lobes] can have intense, spiritual experiences during the seizures and sometimes become preoccupied with religion and moral issues even during the seizure-free or interictal periods.
The author often discusses some experiments that he and his collaborators did to shed light on puzzles going along with the condition, sometimes leading to insights that could help the patient or at least provide a basis for the development of treatments. He also adds his own speculations and hunches, which is quite interesting. He is so precise with these write-ups that he outlines where the actual knowledge ends and the speculation starts.
The book is now more than a decade old and I felt I should have read it long back. Nevertheless, I would hope for a some more survey and edited newer version. (The co-author Sandra Blakeslee is credited in the acknowledgements for “making the book accessible for a wider readership.” The book is written in the first person narrative.)
