Customer Reviews

A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers

5 star:		(25)
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3 star:		(6)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I attended the 2005 Skeptics Society conference on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness at Caltech, where Ramachandran had been scheduled to speak but was unable to do so because of a family emergency. Although I was not previously familiar with his work, the description led me to believe he was a speaker I would be interested in hearing, and this book, which I purchased at the conference, provides a strong case for that. I've long had an interest in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and minored in cognitive science in my Ph.D. studies (never completed) at the University of Arizona. I've been out of academia for 11 years now, and apart from reading occasional works like Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained and Freedom Evolves, I've not been keeping close tabs on the field. The conference and this book were quite a pleasure--it is clear that there have been some significant developments over the last decade.

It is hard to believe that there are still people who think the brain is little more than a radio receiver, a set of mechanical controls for a disembodied spirit to manipulate the body. Ramachandran's book--like the case studies of Oliver Sacks and A.N. Luria--shows how wrongheaded that view is.

This is a thin (112 pages of text, 45 pages of notes), very accessible and entertaining book. If you enjoy the works of Sacks and Luria, you are likely to enjoy this as well. This is not a collection of case studies, though there are some descriptions of particular patients--it is written from a higher elevation, bringing together recent results, explaining unusual phenomena, and speculating about how those phenomena may tie in to a further understanding of the details of the brain's function.

The book came from Ramachandran's BBC Reith lectures, so it is for a popular audience, with the notes providing some more underlying detail. There are five chapters, each dealing with a single topic. The first chapter is about amputees who experience pain in their "phantom limbs" and how the parts of the brain which had been devoted to the now-absent limbs can become mapped to still-present parts of the body which are handled by physically proximate parts of the brain. For example, a patient whose left arm had been amputated could feel contact to the nonexistent fingers of his left hand from touches to parts of his face or upper arm. Ramachandran then uses this remapping phenomenon to speculate about the causes of Capgras' syndrome (where a patient believes people he knows have been replaced with impostors), synesthesia, and pain asymbolia, where a patient responds to pain stimulus with laughter.

The second chapter is about vision, and specifically about the phenomena of blindsight (where a person has no experience of seeing, but at an unconscious level does see), hemisphere neglect, and mirror agnosia. In this chapter Ramachandran discusses "mirror neurons," neurons found in monkeys which activate when a monkey performs some task, but also when the monkey sees another monkey perform the same task.

The third chapter, "The Artful Brain," is the most speculative, and provides Ramachandran's suggested ten "universal laws of art," which he offers as features we find aesthetically pleasing in art, and discusses some reasons why those features might be pleasing to the brain.

The fourth chapter deals in more detail with synesthesia, the perception of stimuli with multiple senses, such as experiencing colors corresponding with sounds or numbers. He links this to cross-activation of sites in the brain (similar to his discussion in the first chapter), points out some similar phenomena that most people share (such as a tendency to associate certain kinds of abstract shapes with certain sounds or names), and speculates that such associations may have paved the way for the evolution of language from non-verbal communication.

The fifth and final chapter is titled "Neuroscience--The New Philosophy." Ramachandran discusses how some of the phenomena of neuroscience might bear on questions from philosophy of mind about qualia, free will, and self-awareness. The chapter doesn't get very deep into any of these philosophical issues, but it's clear that more has been learned in the last few decades of neuroscience than in the last few millenia of philosophy.

I highly recommend this book as an introduction to these topics.

This book is an expansion and revision of a series of talks that the author gave as the 2003 Reith Lectures on BBC Radio. The BBC title was "The Emerging Mind." To summarize the book in a few inaccurate words, the author presents the contributions that neuropathology and the study of unusual perceptual modes like synaesthesia make to the study of the mind considered as a collection of brain structures that process sensory data and the self considered as a metarepresentation within such a mind.

Despite the complex ideas, the discussion is lucid and engaging. Dr. Ramachandran has the courage to suggest new hypotheses and to propose experiments to test them, and he also has a sense of humor.

The author writes in the Introduction, "As my colleague Oliver Sacks said of one of his books: `the real book is in the endnotes, Rama,`" which is certainly true of this edition. There are 45 pages of endnotes for 112 pages of text. The endnotes contain the most interesting discussions and the clearest exposition, which is why I was very disappointed to see that endnotes 11 and 12, the final pair of endnotes in the last chapter, appear to be missing from the Endnotes section. I would really like to read what the author has to say about Anton's syndrome and hypnotic induction. Perhaps the author or publisher could post these on a website somewhere.

The Glossary in the back of the book is substantially the same as the one provided on the BBC website for the original talks. Because of the nature of the subject, it contains both technical scientific terms like _phosphorylation_ and some philosophical terms like _qualia_.
The Glossary does not contain the term _exaption_, not used in the text of original talks but used several times in the book, which I found difficult.

The author, who names Shiva Dakshinamurthy, Lord of Gnosis, as one of the dedicatees of this volume, grew up in Thailand and received his medical degree in India; yet he may mention South Asian philosophy less in this book than the average Western writer who produces a book on the brain for popular consumption. Laboratory experiments drive Dr. Ramachandran's speculation. Nevertheless, because he suggests the relationship between _qualia_ and underlying anatomy and chemistry is not entirely arbitrary, some of us may wish to conclude that introspection is more valuable than is often supposed. The author also writes about the cross-cultural aspects of art, suggesting that there may be some universals of aesthetics; I found this discussion provocative, but not entirely persuasive.

Of course, younger readers who are eager to know more about neuroscience and the directions that such research will proceed in the future should read this book; moreover, older readers like myself with aging brains and perceptual systems may find their need to read this book is urgent and immediate.

After reading Phantoms in the Brain, I was excited to see another book out by V.S. Ramachandran. Sadly, this book is just a dumbed-down rehash of Phantoms. There are only a few snippets of actual new material in this book and they're not covered in any kind of depth. Additionally, he introduces his own personal opinions regarding the human condition that have nothing to do with the studies of the brain. It doesn't even fit at all into the flow of the book.
Don't bother reading this book if you've already read Phantoms in the Brain. But if you haven't read it, I highly, highly recommend Phantoms.

If you haven't read Ramachandran's "Phantoms in the Brain," go read that instead--it's amazing. If you've already read "Phantoms," don't bother with this lightweight re-hashing.

Ramachandran seems to have chosen to follow in the footsteps of another great--Stephen Hawking--by writing one great book and following it up with an endless stream of successively shorter, "more accessible" versions of the same book.

The attempts to make more accessible that which was already readily accessible have put Ramachandran in danger of over-simplifying the material.

Warning: This allegedly 208-page book includes only 113 pages of "Phantom" rehash and then notes.

I read Phantoms in the Brain by the same author and was wowed, so I bought this book and was sorely disappointed that it really really is a shorter, less interesting version of Phantoms in the Brain. Don't waste your time on this book just buy Phantoms in the Brain. I wish I had read the other reviews earlier that said this before I ordered it!

Ramachandran has once again written a book that is valuable to his peers and fascinating to everyone (who isn't brain dead).

I think Ramachandran is the most brilliant, creative Neuroscientist alive. Sure, he is very popular science writer. But if you aren't paying attention (e.g., some of the other Amazon reviewers), you might not see that he is to our field what Mozart, Picasso, and Einstein were to theirs.

Many, many neuroscientists pick "safe" topics and stick with variants upon a theme all their lives. The work is often valuable, but it is not exactly akin to a spectator sport. Ramachandran, in contrast, chooses "sexy" topics to study. He brings "rasa"; spirit; passion to the study of the brain. And if you've ever seen Ramachandran speak (either to scientists or the general public), you know what I'm talking about, and you know that the book is not a fluke.

Ramachandran does not think like other neuroscientists. Most neuroscientists pick a topic or area of the brain, and then do systematic, parametric, sensible experiments to map and test the minute details of their theory. There's usually lots of data collection and data analysis. But Ramachandran has a knack for creating "breakthrough" experiments routinely. In these experiments, the answer to a sexy question comes instantly, dramatically, and powerfully. Such creative, intuitive genius is extremely rare. Trust me, we'd all like to do science this way.

I hope that we can appreciate that Ramachandran incorporates a wide variety of worldviews as he creates gem after gem. He is from the great culture that was and is southern India; he is a medical doctor and neurologist; he is a reknowned perceptual and cognitive neuroscientist who trained with master academics in England; and he is passionately insightful about art. I've heard people compare Ramachandran to mystics, healers and others. The cult status is of course a little ridiculous (see other reviews). But the enthusiasm is understandable. And the book, like his earlier "Phantoms in the Brain" is wonderful.

Ramachandran has published a virtually identical book in the Great Britain under the title, "The Emerging Mind: The BBC Reith Lectures 2003." For some reason, the publishers of the American text chose not to emphasize the link to the BBC Reith Lectures. But in fact, the five Reith Lectures were presented, in edited form, on BBC radio. And more to the point, these radio broadcasts can be heard online for free at the BBC website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003). The website contains a variety of demonstrations, as well as free transcripts of the lectures. One's enjoyment of the book can be enhanced considerably by listening to these five Rieth lectures. The five lectures correspond closely to the five chapters of the book, although they are not identical. The lectures, like the book, are highly entertaining.

My favorite chapter was the fifth chapter, "Neuroscience - The New Philosophy." The central theme is the idea that the study of patients with neurological disorders has implications far beyond the confines of medical neurology. In particular, the chapter takes up the challenge of various forms of mental illness. As Ramachandran points out, "there have traditionally been two broad and different approaches to mental illness. The first one tries to identify the chemical imbalances, changes in transmitters and receptors in the brain, and attempts to correct these changes using drugs. This approach has revolutionized psychiatry and has been phenomenally successful. Patients who used to be put in straitjackets or locked up can now lead relatively normal lives. The second approach we can loosely characterize as the psychotherapeutic approach. It often assumes that most mental illness arises from early upbringing." Ramachandran presents a third approach that is different from either of these, but which, in a sense complements them both. He attempts to explain some symptoms of mental illness in terms of what is known about function, anatomy and neural structures of the brain. He suggests that many of these symptoms and disorders seem less bizarre when viewed from an evolutionary standpoint, that is from a Darwinian perspective. He proposes to give this discipline a new name - evolutionary neuropsychology.

Also, don't miss the preface. The blunt humor may be too subtle for some people, but I loved it.

For those of you who read "Phantoms in the Brain" one word of advice: Don't buy this book. The book's title is misleading as it does not bring new ideas about consciousness but it is a compendium of Dr. Ramachandran's ideas already exposed in his earlier book. The book has 190 pages out of which 78 are notes!!

What happened here? Was this motivated by his publisher or agent? I expected more!

I purchased this book after reading and loving "Phantoms in the Brain," also by Dr. Ramachandran. I was sorely disappointed. This book stands on its own; if it weren't for "Phantoms" I would have to rate this higher. However, this is merely a watered-down version of his earlier work: most of the content is the same and there is less of it. "Phantoms in the Brain" is nearly twice the length and, being the older book, still costs a little less. They're both intensely fascinating, but there is no reason to buy this book. Buy "Phantoms in the Brain" instead.

I realized after reading the beginning of this book that I had already read the author's much longer work---Phantoms in the Brain---and thought it was among the best scientific books I've ever read. This book is VERY brief---it fools you as about half way through the pages it's over, and the rest is notes (interesting notes) and a glossery---but it's also wonderful! It presents many, many cases of fascinating things that can happen with the human brain and consciousness---thinking people are imposters, feeling like you are dead and being able to see colors when you see numbers. I have read before about synesthesia, where senses are mixed up, but I was like many people---quite skeptical that it actually existed. The author managed to make me a believer by showing how tests could actually prove it does happen!

The writing tone here is terrific---funny without being flip, highly intelligent without being hard to understand. You will want to rush out and get the main course---Phantoms in the Brain!

The Reith Lectures 2003 on which the book is based are available (both text and audio) on the BBC website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/). The author is a great speaker... Listen to him and you'll soon get hungry for more!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/