Product Description

A scintillating introduction to the latest thinking on the brain and the mind by the world's leading expert. Neuroscience can now begin to unlock the key to the self. Our knowledge of the brain has progressed so rapidly that it will change the way we think of ourselves as human beings. It will change our notion of understanding. This is a revolution which will have impact on all our lives. Neuroscientists are gathering new empirical evidence about consciousness and human nature; they are picking up where the great earlier thinkers like Freud, Darwin, Charcot and others began. This evidence begins to give substance to some of the grand statements and intuitive leaps made in the nineteenth and early twentieth century about the nature of the self.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77396 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran is Director of the Centre for the Brain at the University of California, San Diego. He has a PhD from Cambridge and many honours and awards including a fellowship from All Souls College, Oxford and a Gold medal from the Australian National University. Dr Ramachandran lectures widely on art, visual perception and the brain. He has published over 120 papers in scientific journals, is Editor-in-chief of the Encyclopaedia of Human Behaviour, the Encyclopaedia of the Human Brain and author of the critically acclaimed Phantoms in the Brain, which was the basis for a two part series on Channel Four TV. Newsweek recently named him a member of 'the century club' one of the 'hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century.'

Customer Reviews

Life is a matter of wires in the brain
The two main themes in this short but important book are that
1. by studying neurological syndromes, we acquire novel insights into the functions of the normal brain;
2. the functions of the brain are best understood from an evolutionary vantage point.

V. Ramachandran's examples illustrate profusely that there is no separate 'mind stuff' and 'physical stuff' in the universe. The two are one and the same. Mind is a matter of matter.
There is also an indisputable link between neurology and psychology: psychic illnesses have organic causes.
The author sees the brain as a model-making machine: virtual reality simulations, models of other people's mind.

The Darwinian aspect is always present. As T. Dobzhansky said (quoted in this book): 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.'
Natural selection has ensured that the subjective sensation of willing is delayed deliberately to coincide not with the onset of the brain command, but with the actual execution of the command.
The hierarchical 'tree' structure of syntax in language may be evolved from tool use. Language itself is not a specific adaptation which evolved for the sole purpose of communication.
The 'booba/kiki' effect shows that there is a pre-existing non-arbitrary translation between the visual appearance of an object and the auditory representation. Lips are physically mimicking the visual appearance of what one is saying and together with tongue movements produce 'proto-words'.

This short book with an excellent glossary is very rich. Ramachandran explains further the seeing process, why we blush, that laughter is a false alarm, why emotion overrides reason, what are the characteristics of the self, how he sees the problem of free will, how artists (Picasso, Moore) discovered the figural primitives of our perceptual grammar ('Less is more').
He stresses rightly the all importance of neurology because 'colonialism, imperialism and war originate also in the brain.'

In a few lectures Ramachandran gives the reader an insight in his bold and essential work. His magisterial main book 'Phantoms in the brain' is a must read.

Insight into how the brain perceives the external world
I first heard of VS Ramachandran when quite by accident I tuned into his giving the 2003 Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4. He has a very pleasing voice, and his entertaining & instructive style prompted me to tune in a few nights later for the next instalment, and then to go and seek out his published work.

I read his other works whilst I waited impatiently for this publication of the transcripts of those BBC Lectures, so that I could re-read and better digest at my own pace his interesting research on phantom limbs etc. I was not disappointed.

if you enjoyed PHANTOMS, you'll enjoy this!!
A great read, very quick, spoken word type of writing. It has the same style as PHANTOMS and goes into more obscure neurological disorders.