Vilayanur Ramachandran tells us what brain damage can reveal about the connection between celebral tissue and the mind, using three startling delusions as examples.
Vilayanur Ramachandran: Brain expert
Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran looks deep into the brain’s most basic mechanisms. By working with those who have very specific mental disabilities caused by brain injury or stroke, he can map functions of the mind to physical structures of the brain.
Why you should listen to him:
Ramachandran is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute.
He is the author of Phantoms in the Brain (the basis for a Nova special), A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness and The Man with the Phantom Twin: Adventures in the Neuroscience of the Human Brain.
"Ramachandran is a latter-day Marco Polo, journeying the silk road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind. He returns laden with phenomenological treasures...which, in his subtle and expert telling, yield more satisfying riches of scientific understanding."Richard Dawkins Email to a friend »
Quotes by Vilayanur Ramachandran
“Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity.”— on the human brain..
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“Think about what artists, novelists and poets have in common: the ability to engage in metaphorical thinking, linking seemingly unrelated ideas, such as, ‘It is the east, and Juliet is the Sun.’”
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“There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain. Based on this, people have calculated that the number of permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe.”
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“Here is a neuron that fires when I reach and grab something, but it also fires when I watch Joe reaching and grabbing something. … It’s as though this neuron is adopting the other person’s point of view.”
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“A polar bear, to evolve a coat, will take thousands of generations, maybe 100,000 years. A human being, a child, can just watch its parent kill another polar bear, and skin it and put the skin on its body, fur on the body, and learn it in one step.”
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“The imitation of complex skills is what we call culture and is the basis of civilization.”
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“There is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are, in fact, connected not just via Facebook and Internet, you’re actually quite literally connected by your neurons.”
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Vilayanur Ramachandran on the Web
Source:
VS Ramachandran: 3 clues to understanding your brain | Video on TED.com
Link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
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Blogger Notes:
Dr. Ramachandran talks about neurology gone wrong... what better subject for a blog about multiple sclerosis?
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