POP! Thats the sound my brain made every time I turned the page

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	• Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind V. S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee Harper Perennial, 1999 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 93 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Interesting Theories About The Brain

This book is very well written and gives some good accounts on some classical cognitive issues (ie, propagnosia, apahsias, phantom limbs, synasthesia, muliple-personality disorder etc). In particular, it is very interesting how he uses Freud's Theory of the unconcious (ie, reaction formation) as an explanation of the patients behavior and possible physiological mechanisms for that. His clinical stories are very interesting.

My critism is that quite too often his speculative and pretentious models are given too much credit without being put through thorough tests (for example, it seems like an elaborate computer program, or artifical NN, would be conscious, according to his consciousness tests). He goes on to give a list of the different types of 'self' that there are. This list is very ad-hoc, and quite frankly, the different types of 'self' seem arbitrarily chosen.
In one thought experiment he claims that one person who never saw color but who's brain has the ability to perceive color will experience the same color experience that a normal person is experiencing if we could hook the the same neurons together and excite them concurrenlty. With this statement he contradicts himself previously on the book where he says the brain is very plastic and conections can quickly change in the brain. If perception is also related to how the neurons are connected, than how can he guarante exciting the brain of different people at the same location will yield the *same perception* on both of them (it is quite possible that the neural connections at that location are very different, so even though we are exciting the same location, the outputs will be drastically different)?

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POP! Thats the sound my brain made every time I turned the page

Oh my goodness! This book BLEW my mind! This is by far the best book out there for anyone who is interested in the strange things our brains do, and why they do them. This book is absolutly fascinating... and surprisingly easy to read! LOVED IT

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Interesting if you're interested...

So do you want to understand more about the inner workings of the human brain? Are you interested in science in general? V.S. Ramachandran provides and enthralling look at the human mind and the uncharted territories ahead for understanding how it works. Much in the spirit of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by Oliver Sacks, this makes the case that there are volumes still to discover in the field of neurology. I found myself referencing and quoting this book repeatedly,I couldn't put it down...I even brought the book in when I was getting a hair cut and convinced my hairdresser to buy the book! If you want to discover deeper knowledge, "Rama" gives extensive footnotes with further details.

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How our brain "works"

He was a fantastic writer, and I spent most of my time reading this book thinking, "Oh, cool!"

An interesting and entertaining book

The brain is a most fascinating organ, and this book opens a window on some of its features by illustrating what can happen as a result of diseases or other events. Despite the seriousness of the topic, the book is entertaining, even though stopping for a moment to put yourself in the shoes of the people to whom these events happen is immediately sobering. The author has built the characters he describes by mixing together several patients (at least, this is what the author reports), which I thought was a good thing because I imagined that the patients would otherwise be very recognizable.
I know too little about the brain to be able to judge the book on its scientific merits, but this is an overall good read.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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