Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. Some of his most notable cases:

• A woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial.
• A man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be "wired" for religious experience?
• A woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time.

Dr. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier -- the human mind -- yielding new and provocative insights into the "big questions" about consciousness and the self.

The writings of Oliver Sacks and others have shown us that we can learn much about ourselves by looking closely at the deficits shown by people with neurological problems. V.S. Ramachandran has seen countless patients suffering from anosognosia, phantom limb pain, blindsight, and other disorders, and he brings a remarkable mixture of clinical intuition and research savvy to bear on their problems. He is one of the few scientists who are able and willing to explore the personal, subjective ramifications of his work; he rehumanizes an often too-sterile field and captures the spirit of wonder so essential for true discovery. Phantoms in the Brain is equal parts medical mystery, scientific adventure, and philosophical speculation; Ramachandran's writing is smart, caring, and very, very funny.

Whether you're curious about the workings of the brain, interested in alternatives to expensive, high-tech science (much of Ramachandran's research is done with materials found around the home), or simply want a fresh perspective on the nature of human consciousness, you'll find satisfaction with Phantoms in the Brain. --Rob Lightner

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

engaging and intrguing, 2008-10-30
Neurology and the field's bizarre unsolved problems are some of the most fascinating and intriguing things. I love reading and pondering on such things as "the Phantom Limb" - experiencing pain in amputated limbs, "Somatoparaphrenia" - the perception that one's limb(s) belong to someone else, "Cotard's syndrome" - the perception that one is dead, "Anosognosia" - the inability to perceive that one has physical defects, dispite obvious evidence to the contrary. These are just some of the intriguing and bizarre neurological syndromes/problems discussed in this book by a pioneering Neurologist (V.S. Ramanchandran) who is credited with performing the world's first sucessful "phamtom limb amputation". Read this book to find out how he was able to do it not with medication or surgery, but with a simple box and a mirror. Some have told me that you have to have at least a masters degree in a scientific field to understand this book. I do not get that impression however. I do think that at least a rudimentary understanding of biology would be helpful, but it's not necessary. This book can be read and enjoyed by any reasonably intelligent adult.

Reading books like this and pondering on the material herein helps us to appreciate the complexity of the human mind.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

An Exciting and Entertaining Foray into the Mind, 2008-10-21
Phantoms in the Brain is a summary of V.S. Ramachandran's experiences as a researcher in the field of neuroscience. In Phantoms in the Brain, Ramachandran combines personal anecdotes, well-designed experiments, and educated conjecture in an entertaining, well-written narrative suitable for anyone interested in discovering more about how the human mind works.

Phantoms is laid out in an easy-to-follow, consistent manner. In general, each chapter introduces a new case study, and Ramachandran recounts his clever experiments to burrow into the cause and nature of his patients' problems. He then often expands into a brief, layman-friendly description of the related neuroanatomy, which is typically supported by helpful illustrations and diagrams. Ramachandran then sometimes delves into conjecture into how his findings explain human nature. The layout of the book is excellent, as the chapters are clearly divided, allowing the reader to advance at his or her own pace.

Review

One of the most remarkable aspects of Phantoms of the Brain is how vividly Ramachandran brings his patients to life for the reader. In fact, "patient" is a quite sterile term for how Ramachandran interacts with them; he becomes their friend and leader on his quest for insight into their neurological abnormalities. Ramachandran does an excellent job of describing their mental deviations, from amputees with "phantom limbs" to stroke victims with "hemi-neglect," who ignore everything in half of their world (field of vision). He also takes care to keep his phraseology on the underlying brain anatomy as accessible as possible to the casual reader while avoiding neglect of important biological aspects important to the case studies. Ramachandran comes off as a natural teacher; his explanations are excellent. His style is fast-paced and entertaining while taking care to provide ample detail so that the reader understands the subject matter at hand. Often, he mixes humor and experiments that the reader can perform (such as blind spot experiments) into his discussion, making the book genuinely interactive.

Even so, the most impressive quality of Phantoms in the Brain is not its style but its content. The experiments Ramachandran conducts on and with his patients are ingenious; they benefit the patient while being both simple to perform and genuinely insightful into the underlying neuroscience. For example, in one case, Ramachandran presents an arm amputee who complains of persistent pain due to his phantom fist being clinched tightly and permanently. Ramachandran develops a clever device using only a box and mirror to relieve the patient's pain. His ingenuity and resourcefulness often prevails where many doctors' failed previously. However, his account does not stop with the improvement in condition of the patient; he looks into the science to explain the changes that occurred in both the neurological abnormality's formation and in his treatment.

Such experiments lead Ramachandran into one final frontier: the very nature of the self. As he put it, "what I didn't realize, though, when I began these experiments, was that they would take me right into the heart of human nature" (137). And Ramachandran does not hesitate to offer his opinion on what it means to be human. In this commentary on what it means to be human lies Phantoms in the Brain's one flaw: Ramachandran often overextends himself on his philosophical conjecturing, leading to premature and sometimes contradicting conclusions. Early on, Ramachandran declares that our inner being, "despite all its appearance of durability, is an entirely transitory internal construct that can be profoundly modified with a just a few simple tricks. It is merely a shell that you've temporarily created for successfully passing on your genes to your offspring" (62). He counts that "our sense of having a private nonmaterial soul... is really an illusion" (256). However, in the same breath he supports the notion that self-awareness is "no trivial detail, no minor by-product of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here" (257). He also extols the work of Shakespeare, yet admits that "the proverbial monkey with a typewriter" (197) could not approach his genius; an abstract "spark" is needed.

This philosophical conjecture does not severely hamper the effectiveness as the work of a whole. Ramachandran often includes quotes from sources as wide-ranging as Ovid, Shakespeare, and Nietzsche. These contributions, including an interesting retake on Freud, inspire the reader to think above and beyond the function of the brain to what it means to be human. He encourages the reader to think for himself, saying "the moral of this tale is that you should not reject an idea as outlandish simply because you can't think of a mechanism that explains it" (223-4). Regardless, the philosophical musings should not and do not take away from what Phantoms in the Brain truly is: an excellent display of V.S. Ramachandran's gifted and innovative research methods and his incredible results.

Bottom Line

Phantoms in the Brain is highly recommended for anyone interested in the field of neuroscience. In fact, Phantoms is a great read for anyone involved in experimental science of any sort, from economics to biology. His methods and explanations are brilliant in their effectiveness and simplicity, and Phantoms in the Brain describes them well. Every field of science could learn from this account of Ramachandran's studies.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Are there phantoms in our brain or is our self a phantom?, 2008-08-03
This book is a compilation of interesting clinical cases in neurosciences, brain injury and therapy, mainly unrelated to one another. You could easily read only those chapters of your interest.

It seemed to me that as "unifying thesis", the author chose the idea of the "self" and how it might be only a "phantom" of our brain, suggesting that the "unity" and individuality that we perceive as self might be an illusion created by the way our mind works. He illustrates how this illusion of unity is broken with some brain injuries, like people that "neglect" their left part of the body, people that see "visions" or people that don't perceive parts of their body as belonging to them but to other persons.

In the section related to phantom limbs, the author explains the idea that we are born with a "body image" that persists even after a limb has been amputated, that after such an amputation, the neural circuitry in our brains "remap" and that we can "trick" our brain with mirror images of our body, thereby demonstrating that our self perception is a "making" of our neural connections.

In another section the author states that there are two different neural pathways that start in the eyes, one that leads to the object recognition part of our brains and the other that allows for space awareness and motion. In this chapter, the author mentions that injury in the first neural pathway can lead to people that see without seeing, meaning that they "perceive" and can act upon this perception, but they are not consciously aware of it (as if guided by a phantom in their brains, not by their conscious self).

The author does not succeed to unify all the clinical cases presented in the book with the "phantom of the self" idea since in most cases he does not make the connection evident enough, so what should probably be one of the main ideas of the book ends up being weekly supported and remains largely unnoticed by the reader. I do not fully understand the biological, philosophical and social implications of this thesis and I would have liked that the author had explored it a bit more deeply. Since the author merely suggests the underlying topic, I suppose he did not want to enter "dangerous" philosophical terrain and be taken away by making assumptions for which there needs to be more evidence (few authors resist commenting on their personal positions). So he saved his very good scientific material and clinical cases from becoming a subject of controversy and polemics.




0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Good for those considering Cognitive Science as a major, 2008-06-23
This books presents detailed and well documented transcripts of clinical trials in the areas of neuroscience/ology. A few interesting experiments involved subduing a patients phantom limb pain, in this case the sensations of their own fingers clawing into their palm, by constructing a simple box paneled with mirrors that would provide the visual of having two hands to a hand amputee patient. Another case is in plasticity where the rubbing certain areas of a patients face with a Q-tip invoked sensations of the Q-tip rubbing along the now amputated hand. This is also the first book I have read that had so many interesting and insightful footnotes.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

And the point is...., 2008-06-22
Reading this book gives one a foundation on which to build the complete picture. Yes, the book is not giving the reader the complete picture. But it does provide the foundation. Now what the reader needs to do is study the books on the Buddhist teachings of emptiness by Guy Newland or Jeffrey Hopkins. After having done this, now one is able to connect the dots, build the complete picture. What is very odd is how authors of this discipline, with all their studies, with all their research, have not yet arrived at this juncture. Hmmmm....it truly makes one wonder.

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