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Summary: Excellent book of case studies on the diseases of the mind
Review: This is a layman's journey into the case studies of nureological problems. The book is written in a clear style that makes each case a story rather than a statistic. If you've ever wondered about diseases of the mind, this is the book for you.It's not really a good book to read before bed as some of these people have problems that could make one want to stay up and talk about it with someone else.
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Summary: Hang on to your right hemisphere!
Review: This is one of the most entertaining and thought provoking books I've read in a while. Oliver Sacks has done a marvelous job of illustrating just how mysterious and tenuous our perception of the world is by relating stories about patients who have suffered some kind of injury to the right hemisphere of their brains. Why the "right" hemisphere? As Sacks explains, the left hemisphere has a fairly comprehensible role; it seems to follow rules. When it does not function appropriately, the consequences are reasonably predictable. "Indeed, the entire history of neurology and neuropsychology can be seen as a history of the investigation of the left hemisphere." In contrast, the right hemisphere has been something of an enigma, and is consequently called the 'minor' hemisphere. But, "it is the right hemisphere which controls the crucial powers of recognizing reality which every living creature must have in order to survive." For example, the right hemisphere is responsible for "proprioception", which allows us to feel our bodies as "proper to us"; that they belong to us. This is so basic that it is difficult to even imagine what it would be like to have impaired proprioception. Sacks is keenly aware of this challenge; in a sense, the entire book is an attempt to give us a glimpse into such an incomprehensible world. Sacks quotes Wittgenstein:, "The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one's eyes.)" Those things that are most basic, most obvious, have a deeply mysterious foundation in the brain. One can begin to appreciate this when one considers those unfortunate individuals who have lost some of these basic perceptions due to injury or illness. As Sacks points out in the introduction, "It is not only difficult, it is impossible, for patients with certain right-hemisphere syndromes to know their own problems... And it is singularly difficult, even for the most sensitive observer, to picture the inner state, the 'situation', of such patients, for this is almost unimaginably remote from anything he himself has ever known." Sacks presents detailed and compassionate accounts of numerous patients whose worlds are indeed unimaginably remote from our own. He tells us of patients who have difficulty distinguishing between people and inanimate objects, those who have perfect "vision" yet cannot discern the purpose of an object without tactile feedback, those who fail to recognize their own limbs as belonging to them, and those who have lost fundamental spatial concepts, such as the distinction between left and right. One of the most intriguing cases that Sacks presents is that of a woman who had "totally lost the idea of 'left', both with regard to the world and her own body," a condition known as hemi-inattention. To this woman, everything in her left visual field simply ceased to exist, in analogy to the way each of us fills the blind spots in our visual field. This unfortunate woman would eat half her lunch (that on the right side of her tray) and was incapable of turning to the left (since left did not exist) to discover what remained. In time, she learned to turn herself around, always to the right, until she found the rest of her lunch. This book is not only engrossing, it is challenging; it forces one to acknowledge that what we take as so plainly obvious about the world is intimately tied to basic brain function. Oliver Sacks demonstrates beautifully that the brain is still deeply mysterious, particularly in how it creates our sense of reality. There are profound implications here for those interested in psychology and philosophy. It's a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This was required reading for my undergraduate course in neurobiology. There's no need to have any understanding of neurobiology in order to understand this book. It provides an interesting and entertaining view into how our brains control our basic sensory systems. Particularly interesting is the woman who lost, what I call, her "sixth sense" proprioception. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good quick read.
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