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

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran 4.7 out of 5 stars (98)  $12.48

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From Publishers Weekly
What does an amputee who still feels a phantom limb have in common with an avant-garde artist, or a schizophrenic who claims to be controlled by alien implants, or an autistic child who can draw a hyper-realistic horse? According to neuroscientist Ramachandran (coauthor, Phantoms in the Brain), named by Newsweek one of the 100 people to watch in the 21st century, the answer lies deep in the physical structures of the brain, and his new book offers a thought-provoking survey of his area of research. Through examples, anecdotes and conjecture, Ramachandran aims "to make neuroscience... more accessible to a broad audience." In this he succeeds admirably, explaining how the roots of both psychological disorders and aesthetic accomplishment can be located in the various regions of the brain and the connections (or lack thereof) between them. The text is engaging and readable , feeling as though Ramachandran had sat down for an afternoon to explain his research over tea (no surprise, as the book grew out of the author's 2003 BBC Reith lectures). Though the topic of neuroscience might initially seem daunting, readers who enjoy science popularization in the vein of Oliver Sacks, Richard Dawkins (both of whom enthusiastically blurb this book) and Stephen Jay Gould will find much to appreciate here.
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From Scientific American
Patient X declares that his mother is an impostor. The diagnosis? Freud might say the patient has a troubled Oedipus complex. But the same patient thinks his poodle is a fraud, too. Ramachandran offers a more rigorous neurological explanation in A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness. Examining the cause for patient X’s behavior is just one stop on the writer’s journey through the neural pathways of the brain. As the tour guide, Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Diego, leads readers through a collection of his experiments and theories, championing the idea that charting the brain on a neurological level will provide us with a robust understanding of everything from politics to love. Case studies of patients with obscure syndromes help the author solve the brain–mind puzzle piece by piece. In the case of patient X, communication between regions responsible for visual recognition and the production of emotional responses has been impaired. Because the patient recognizes his mother’s face but feels no corresponding emotion, he deduces that she is simply a look-alike. Parts of the book are fascinating and accessible, especially Ramachandran’s work with phantom limbs and synesthesia—in which patients seem to transpose the processing of senses, such as sensing the note "middle C" as the color green. Ramachandran presents a convincing argument relating the syndrome to the enhancement of an ability we all possess: drawing connections between objects and events. In a noticeable departure from the empirical explanations of the early sections, Ramachandran later explores possible psychological underpinnings for the evolution of human language and a universal definition of art. The final chapter, an abstract, philosophical foray into free will and the human sense of self, is even more speculative. At times a captivating presentation of facts and anecdotes and at other times an assortment of theories, the book is more of a tour of Ramachandran’s opinions and experiences than the concise introduction one expects from the title. In the end, the book succeeds in delivering an entertaining and thought-provoking look at how and why we should think about thought.

Lisa DeKeukelaere

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45 Reviews 5 star:  (23) 4 star:  (9) 3 star:  (6) 2 star:  (5) 1 star:  (2)           Average Customer Review 4.0 out of 5 stars (45 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   70 of 71 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating intro to recent neuroscience of consciousness, May 25, 2005 By  James J. Lippard "skeptic" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    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. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   43 of 43 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Neuropathology and the Mind, September 2, 2004 By  marqjonz "marqjonz" (Suwanee, GA United States) - See all my reviews 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. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   24 of 27 people found the following review helpful: 1.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly disappointing, March 6, 2006 By  J. Adams (Portland OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    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. Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 45 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, One of My Favorites I wish someone would have given me this book my senior year of high school. I might very well have decided on a career in neuroscience. Read more Published 4 months ago by K. M. Fontenot 5.0 out of 5 stars Humble yet Authoritative Ramachandran - an expert who wisely side-steps the aura of a guru - offers a humble yet authoritative tour of the mind. Read more Published 8 months ago by Pavel Somov, Ph.D., Author of ... 4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the mysteries of the mind Though it doesn't give you outright answers to the mysteries of the mind, this book, written by the expert in the field, will certainly give you much to think about! Read more Published 9 months ago by Ruth Star 5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book - easy read Dr. Ramachandran has taken the world of nueroscience to common people. The language is easy to understand and the flow is very good. Read more Published 10 months ago by paa choo 5.0 out of 5 stars Scintillates with Profound Implications This book is short and not tightly structured- but here it hardly matters. You could spend hours thinking about the profound implications of each short chapter- or even some... Read more Published 10 months ago by Human Reed 4.0 out of 5 stars Brief but interesting The "Brief Tour" part of the title is accurate, as this book is a relatively quick read. It jumps between interesting case studies and Ramachandran's theories which still await... Read more Published 15 months ago by Matthew Kruse 5.0 out of 5 stars Great book! I recommend this book without hesitation. It presents a brief survey of different studies conducted by Ramachandran. Read more Published 16 months ago by Firat Soylu 3.0 out of 5 stars too brief I'm an Oliver Sack fan of old and was excited to find a similar author. He is a bit more in depth and metaphysical than Sacks and I adored his last book. Read more Published 18 months ago by ellen foster 5.0 out of 5 stars great read As a student of Cognitive Science, I often have problems explaining to friends and family just what it is about cognition that is so fascinating. Read more Published 19 months ago by Auj 5.0 out of 5 stars V.S. Ramachandran -The Marco Polo of Brain Science- This is a great Book! If you have read Dan Dennett's Counsciousness explained you should read this!!! Read more Published 19 months ago by Rainer Boegle Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 45 customer reviews...

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