![]() She thought the pen was “in the mirror” or must have been behind it, never even thinking it was on her left. She knew full well it was a mirror, but since she now saw the reflection on her right side, but doesn’t pay attention to her left side. Ramachandran experimented putting a mirror on her “good side” and a pen on her left side. If people draw attention to it, she will notice, but if not she might. Ramachandran in chapter 6 of Phantoms in The Brain talks about the patient Ellen.Įllen damaged her right parietal lobe and simply does not pay attention to what happens to the left of her space and body. Ramachandran says that our brain fills information out of a basic evolutionary need: saving resources and saving computational power. The same principle applies when we see a dog behind a fence: we don’t perceive the dog as in pieces, but as a whole even though our brain sees “pieces”. This is not an exception, but the example of a trait of our brain to fill in information even when there’s no information. Ramachandran talks about the blind spot and how our brain “fills the gap” (you can check your blind spot here). Chapter 5: The Secret Life of James ThurberĬhapter 5 of Phantoms in The Brain focuses on hallucinations. Ramachandran says that perception is much more than replicating images in our brain. Ramachandran managed to cure him with a simple assemble of different mirrors, giving the patient’s brain the feeling that he was seeing the paralyzed hand moving.Īs the patient opened the non-amputated hand, the brain thought it was the amputated hand, and finally the pain was relieved. In chapter 3 Ramachandran discusses a man with an amputated hand who had the feeling his fingernails were digging into the palm of his amputated hand. Ramachandran wonders if the foot fetish has something to do with the fact that the mental map of sexual orgasms and feet are spatially so nearby. Ramachandran found out that, by scratching certain part of his face, Tom was able to finally scratch his hand.Īlso, people with an amputated foot had much bigger orgasms because the penis mental map took over the foot mental map. The over-imposing of the brain maps created a mix up of signals for Tom. What happened is that the mental maps of the arm and face took over the space in the brain that was allocated to the hand. He couldn’t scratch it because, of course, the hand wasn’t there. The patient he examined, Tom, had a constant itching sensation on his amputated hand. Chapter 2: “Knowing Where to Scratch”Ĭhapter two of Phantoms in The Brain focuses on phantom limbs. The example in chapter one is of a woman whose left hand tried to strangle her. Ramachandran says there are some specialized parts of the brain and focuses on how they interact with each other. Today is no different: many discoveries are staring in our face and need no expensive equipment.Īnd Ramachandran certainly walks that talk. He says Galileo understood all planets orbit around the sun with a cardboard with two lenses inside. Ramachandran also often uses very simple techniques and technologies. He says that if I showed you a talking pig you wouldn’t say “but that’s just one, show me one more and then I’ll believe you“. Instead of discounting and ignoring them as most do, one single example is enough to at least start a theory. Ramachandran says that “borderline cases” and “exceptions” provide the best examples to understand how the brain works. He removes patients from the realm of insanity and say they are often simply defense mechanisms. He prefers investigating borderline neurological cases rather than the norm. Ramachandran has a different approach then most. His contributions have not only helped increase our scientific knowledge, but also helped countless patients. Ramachandran is a neuroscientist and he is known for being a bit of a maverick in the scientific community. Chapter 11: “You Forgot to Deliver the Twin”Ībout The Author: V.S.Chapter 10: The Woman Who Died Laughing.Chapter 8: “The Unbearable Likeness of Being”.Chapter 7: The Sound of One Hand Clapping.Chapter 5: The Secret Life of James Thurber.
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