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Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind Paperback – August 18, 1999

by V. S. Ramachandran (Author), Sandra Blakeslee (Author), Oliver Sacks (Foreword)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 674 ratings
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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.

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  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    August 18, 1999
  4. Dimensions
    6.12 x 0.88 x 9.25 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0688172172
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0688172176
  7. See all details
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4.7 out of 5 stars
674 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and informative. They find it enlightening and helpful for understanding how the brain works. The writing style is described as humorous and entertaining, appealing to both the average person and the scholar.

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ReadabilityUnderstandingHumor
82 customers mention "Readability"82 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and informative. They appreciate the conversational writing style and real-world examples. The book is described as fast-paced and never boring, even though it's about medical topics.

"...These are some dense/heavy topics. He makes them approachable and explains well how they add to his general theory of cognition and neurology...." Read more

"Interesting stories about the brain and how things can go wrong with its working." Read more

"I *truly* enjoyed this book - not just for all the fascinating new things I've learned about how the brain works, but because of Ramachandran's..." Read more

"...The style of the book is very conversational, almost as if the author is literally writing his own thoughts down verbatim which helps the reader..." Read more

38 customers mention "Understanding"36 positive2 negative

Customers find the book enlightening and helpful for understanding how the brain works. They appreciate its detailed explanations and use of science, humor, and spirituality to provide a comprehensive view. The author provides an overview and ongoing observations and theoretical possibilities that are easy to understand.

"...These are some dense/heavy topics. He makes them approachable and explains well how they add to his general theory of cognition and neurology...." Read more

"...of the eternal ebb and flow of events in the cosmos, this realization is very liberating...." Read more

"...He doesn't seem to take himself, others, or research overly seriously - he exudes warmth, humanity, and humor, while being interesting and rigorous...." Read more

""Phantoms in the Brain" provides a unique approach by delving deeply into the world of neuroscience, connecting theories and cases together..." Read more

11 customers mention "Humor"11 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's humor. They find the writing style entertaining and witty. The book is suitable for both average readers and students, and readers appreciate the author's accent.

"...others, or research overly seriously - he exudes warmth, humanity, and humor, while being interesting and rigorous...." Read more

"...It is an enjoyable read providing humor and at the same time, deeper philosophical views ...." Read more

"...Ramachandran and Blakeslee created this delightful book using humor, logic and simple tests to illuminate how the brain works and doesn't work...." Read more

"...of making it understandable for the average person yet appealing to the schollar. I am very greatful for having picked it up, ...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Bryant Paul
    5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoying it so far
    Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    I'm about half way through the book so far. A few things are very clear at this point. First, the author is a good writer. These are some dense/heavy topics. He makes them approachable and explains well how they add to his general theory of cognition and neurology. Second, the cases are really fascinating, and the author approaches them like a detective. This makes for a more involving and engaging reading experience. Third, the print is really small. I just started wearing glasses, and even with them, it's a bit physically uncomfortable to read the text. Regardless of this last point, I am thoroughly enjoying the book and have learned a lot from it.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • O. Halabieh
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Fascinating Struggles of the Brain to Understand Itself!
    Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

    1- "I mention this episode to emphasize that a single medical student or resident whose mind is open to new ideas and who works without sophisticated equipment can revolutionize the practice of medicine. It is in this spirit that we should all undertake our work, because one never knows what nature is hiding. I'd also like to say a word about speculation, a term that has acquired a pejorative connotation among some scientists. Describing someone's idea as "mere speculation" is often considered insulting. This is unfortunate. As the English biologist Peter Medawar has noted, "An imaginative conception of what might be true is the starting point of all great discoveries in science." Ironically, this is sometimes true even when the speculation turns out to be wrong...Every scientist knows that the best research emerges from a dialectic between speculation and healthy skepticism. Ideally the two should coexist in the same brain, but they don't have to. Since there are people who represent both extremes, all ideas eventually get tested ruthlessly. "

    2-"The famous saying "May you live in interesting times" has a special meaning now for those of us who study the brain and human behavior. On the one hand, despite two hundred years of research, the most basic questions about the human mind—How do we recognize faces? Why do we cry? Why do we laugh? Why do we dream? and Why do we enjoy music and art?—remain unanswered, as does the really big question: What is consciousness? On the other hand, the advent of novel experimental approaches and imaging techniques is sure to transform our understanding of the human brain. What a unique privilege it will be for our generation—and our children's—to witness what I believe will be the greatest revolution in the history of the human race: understanding ourselves. The prospect of doing so is at once both exhilarating and disquieting. There is something distinctly odd about a hairless neotenous primate that has evolved into a species that can look back over its own shoulder and ask questions about its origins. And odder still, the brain can not only discover how other brains work but also ask questions about its own existence: Who am I? What happens after death? Does my mind arise exclusively from neurons in my brain? And if so, what scope is there for free will? It is the peculiar recursive quality of these questions—as the brain struggles to understand itself—that makes neurology fascinating."

    3- "But before we begin, I think it's important for you to understand my personal approach to science and why I am drawn to curious cases. When I give talks to lay audiences around the country, one question comes up again and again: "When are you brain scientists ever going to come up with a unified theory for how the mind works? There's Einstein's general theory of relativity and Newton's universal law of gravitation in physics. Why not one for the brain?" My answer is that we are not yet at the stage where we can formulate grand unified theories of mind and brain. Every science has to go through an initial "experiment" or phenomena-driven stage—in which its practitioners are still discovering the basic laws—before it reaches a more sophisticated theory-driven stage...My point is simply that neuroscience today is in the Faraday stage, not in the Maxwell stage, and there is no point in trying to jump ahead. I would love to be proved wrong, of course, and there is certainly no harm in trying to construct formal theories about the brain, even if one fails (and there is no shortage of people who are trying). But for me, the best research strategy might be characterized as "tinkering." Whenever I use this word, many people look rather shocked, as if one couldn't possibly do sophisticated science by just playing around with ideas and without an overarching: theory to guide one's hunches. But that's exactly what I mean (although these hunches are far from random; they are always guided by intuition."

    4- "First and foremost, they suggest that brain maps can change, sometimes with astonishing rapidity. This finding flatly contradicts one of the most widely accepted dogmas in neurology— the fixed nature of connections in the adult human brain. It had always been assumed that once this circuitry, including the Penfield map, has been laid down in fetal life or in early infancy, there is very little one can do to modify it in adulthood. Indeed, this presumed absence of plasticity in the adult brain is often invoked to explain why there is so little recovery of function after brain injury and why neurological ailments are so notoriously difficult to treat. But the evidence from Tom shows— contrary to what is taught in textbooks—that new, highly precise and functionally effective pathways can emerge in the adult brain as early as four weeks after injury. It certainly doesn't follow that revolutionary new treatments for neurological syndromes will emerge from this discovery right away, but it does provide some grounds for optimism."

    5- "When we experience pain, special pathways are activated simultaneously both to carry the sensation and to amplify it or dampen it down as needed. Such "volume control" (sometimes called gate control) is what allows us to modulate our responses to pain effectively in response to changing demands (which might explain why acupuncture works or why women in some cultures don't experience pain during labor). Among amputees, it's entirely possible that these volume control mechanisms have gone awry as a result of remapping—resulting in an echo-like "wha wha" reverberation and amplification of pain. Second, remapping is inherently a pathological or abnormal process, at least when it occurs on a large-scale, as after the loss of a limb. It's possible that the touch synapses are not quite correctly rewired and their activity could be chaotic. Higher brain centers would then interpret the abnormal pattern of input as junk, which is perceived as pain. In truth, we really don't know how the brain translates patterns of nerve activity into conscious experience, be it pain, pleasure or color."

    6- "This simple experiment not only shows how malleable your body image is but also illustrates the single most important principle underlying all of perception—that the mechanisms of perception are mainly involved in extracting statistical correlations from the world to create a model that is temporarily useful."

    7- "For your entire life, you've been walking around assuming that your "self is anchored to a single body that remains stable and permanent at least until death. Indeed, the "loyalty" of yourself to your own body is so axiomatic that you never have to pause to think about it, let alone question it. Yet these experiments suggest the exact opposite—that your body image, despite all its appearance of durability, is an entirely transitory internal construct that can be profoundly modified with just a few simple tricks. It is merely a shell that you've temporarily created for successfully passing on your genes to your offspring."

    8- "So the first step in understanding perception is to get rid of the idea of images in the brain and to begin thinking about symbolic descriptions of objects and events in the external world. A good example of a symbolic description is a written paragraph like the ones on this page. If you had to convey to a friend in China what your apartment looks like, you wouldn't have to tele-transport it to China. All you'd have to do would be to write a letter describing your apartment. Yet the actual squiggles of ink—the words and paragraphs in the letter—bear no physical resemblance to your bedroom. The letter is a symbolic description of your bedroom."

    9- "In making these judgments, the brain takes advantage of the fact that the world we live in is not chaotic and amorphous; it has stable physical properties. During evolution—and partly during childhood as a result of learning—these stable properties became incorporated into the visual areas of the brain as certain "assumptions" or hidden knowledge about the world that can be used to eliminate ambiguity in perception."

    10- "Bear in mind that the filling in is not just some odd quirk of the visual system that has evolved for the sole purpose of dealing with the blind spot. Rather, it appears to be a manifestation of a very general ability to construct surfaces and bridge gaps that might be otherwise distracting in an image—the same ability, in fact, that allows you to see a rabbit behind a picket fence as a complete rabbit, not a sliced-up one. In our natural blind spot we have an especially obvious example of filling in—one that provides us with a valuable experimental opportunity to examine the "laws" that govern the process."

    11- "An important distinction must be made between perceptual and conceptual completion. To understand the difference, just think of the space behind your head now as you are sitting on your chair reading this book. You can let your mind wander, thinking about the kinds of objects that might be behind your head or body. Is there a window? A Martian? A gaggle of geese? With your imagination, you can "fill in" this missing space with just about anything, but since you can change your mind about the content, I call this process conceptual filling in. Perceptual filling in is very different. When you fill in your blind spot with a carpet design, you don't have such choices about what fills that spot; you can't change your mind about it. Perceptual filling in is carried out by visual neurons. Their decisions, once made, are irreversible: Once they signal to higher brain centers "Yes, this is a repetitive texture" or yes, this is a straight line." what you perceive is irrevocable."

    12- "If I'm right, all these bizarre visual hallucinations are simply an exaggerated version of the processes that occur in your brain and mine every time we let our imagination run free. Somewhere in the confused welter of interconnecting forward and backward pathways is the interface between vision and imagination We don't have clear ideas yet about where this interface is or how it works (or even whether there is a single interface), but these patients provide some tantalizing clues about what might be going on. The evidence from them suggests that what we call perception is really the end result of a dynamic interplay between sensory signals and high-level stored information about visual images from the past. Each time any one of us encounters an object, the visual system begins a constant questioning process. Fragmentary evidence comes in and the higher centers say, "Hmmmmm, maybe this is an animal." Our brains then pose a series of visual questions: as in a twenty-questions game. Is it a mammal? A cat? What kind of cat? Tame? Wild? Big? Small? Black or white or tabby? The higher visual centers then project partial "best fit" answers back to lower visual areas including the primary visual "best fit" answers back to lower visual areas including the primary visual cortex. In this manner, the impoverished image is progressively worked on and refined (with bits "filled in," when appropriate). I think that these massive feed forward and feedback projections are in the business of conducting successive iterations that enable us to home in on the closest approximation to the truth. To overstate the argument deliberately, perhaps we are hallucinating all the time and what we call perception is arrived at by simply determining which hallucination best conforms to the current sensory input. But if, as happens in Charles Bonnet syndrome, the brain does not receive confirming visual stimuli. it is free simply to make up its own reality. And, as James Thurber was well aware, there is apparently no limit to its creativity."

    13- "The idea that the right hemisphere is a left-wing revolutionary that generates paradigm shifts, whereas the left hemisphere is a die-hard conservative that clings to the status quo, is almost certainly a gross oversimplification, but, even if it turns out to be wrong, it does suggest new ways of doing experiments and goads us into asking novel questions about the denial syndrome."

    14- "One can make a list of the many kinds of self-deception that Sigmund and Anna Freud described and see clear-cut, amplified examples of each of them in our patients. It was seeing this list that convinced me for the first time of the reality of psychological defenses and the central role that they play in human nature. Denial...Repression...Reaction formation...Rationalization...Humor...Projection."

    15- "His Story offers insights into how each of us constructs narratives about our life and the people who inhabit it. In a sense your life—your autobiography—is a long sequence of highly personal episodic memories about your first kiss, prom night, wedding, birth of a child, fishing trips and so on. But it is also much more than that. Clearly, there is a personal identity, a sense of a unified "self" that runs like a golden thread through the whole fabric of our existence. The Scottish philosopher David Hume drew an analogy between the human personality and a river—the water in the river is ever-changing and yet the river itself remains constant. What would happen, he asked, if a person were to dip his foot into a river and then dip it in again after half an hour—would it be the same river or a different one? If you think this is a silly semantic riddle, you're right, for the answer depends on your definition of "same" and "river.""

    16- "There are some questions about the brain that are so mysterious, so deeply enigmatic, that most serious scientists simply shy away from them, as if to say, "That would be premature to study" and "I'd be a fool if I embarked on such a quest." And yet these are the very issues that fascinate us most of all. The most obvious one, of course, is religion, a quintessentially human trait, but it is only one unsolved mystery of human nature. What about Other uniquely human traits—such as our capacity for music, math, humor and poetry? What allowed Mozart to compose an entire symphony in his head or mathematicians like Fermat or Ramanujan to "discover" flawless conjectures and theorems without ever going through step-by-step formal proofs? And what goes on in the brain of a person like Dylan Thomas that allowed him to write such evocative poetry? Is the creative spark simply an expression of the divine spark that exists in all of us? Ironically clues come from a bizarre condition called "idiot savant syndrome" (or, to use the more politically correct phrase, the savant syndrome). These individuals (retarded and yet highly talented) can give us valuable insights about the evolution of human nature—a topic that became an obsession for some of the greatest scientific minds of the last century."

    17- "According to Wallace, as the human brain evolved, it encountered a new and equally powerful force called culture. Once culture. language and writing emerged, he argued, human evolution became Lamarckian—that is, you could pass on the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime to your offspring. These progeny will be much wiser than the offspring of illiterates not because your genes have changed but simply because this knowledge—in the form of culture—has been transferred from your brain to your child's brain. In this way, the brain is symbiotic with culture; the two are as interdependent as the naked hermit crab and with culture; the two are as interdependent as the naked hermit crab and its shell or the nucleated cell and its mitochondria. For Wallace, culture propels human evolution, making us absolutely unique in the animal kingdom. Isn't it extraordinary, he said, that we are the only animal in which the mind is vastly more important than any bodily organ, assuming a tremendous significance because of what we call "culture." Moreover, our brain actually helps us avoid the need for further specialization. Most organisms evolve to become more and more specialized as they take up new environmental niches, be it a longer neck for the giraffe or sonar for the bat. Humans, on the other hand, have evolved an organ, a brain, that gives us the capacity to evade specialization. We can colonize the Arctic without evolving a fur coat over millions of years like the polar bear because we can go kill one, take its coat and drape it on ourselves. And then we can give it to our children and grandchildren."

    18- "The moral of all this is not that we should have blind faith in the "wisdom of the East" but that there are sure to be many nuggets of insight in these ancient practices. However, unless we conduct systematic "Western-Style" experiments, we'll never know which ones really work (hypnosis and meditation) and which ones don't (crystal healing). Several laboratories throughout the world are poised to launch such experiments, and the first half of the next century will, in my view, be remembered as a golden age of neurology and mind-body medicine. It will be a time of great euphoria and celebration for novice researchers entering the field."

    19- "I won't pretend to have solved these mysteries, but I do think there's a new way to study consciousness by treating it not as a philosophical. logical or conceptual issue, but rather as an empirical problem."

    20- "It seems somehow disconcerting to be told that your life, all your hopes, triumphs and aspirations simply arise from the activity of neurons in your brain. But far from being humiliating, this idea is ennobling. I think. Science— cosmology, evolution and especially the brain sciences—is telling l us that we have no privileged position in the universe and that our sense of having a private non-material soul "watching the world" is really an illusion (as has long been emphasized by Eastern mystical traditions like Hinduism and Zen Buddhism). Once you realize that far from being a spectator, you are in fact part of the eternal ebb and flow of events in the cosmos, this realization is very liberating. Ultimately this idea also allows you to cultivate a certain humility—the essence of all authentic religious experience."

    21- "Paul Davies, who said: ..."This can be no trivial detail, no minor by-product of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here." Are we? I don't think brain science alone, despite all its triumphs, will ever answer that question. But that we can ask the question at all is, to me, the most puzzling aspect of our existence."
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  • D
    5.0 out of 5 stars About neurology
    Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2024
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    Interesting stories about the brain and how things can go wrong with its working.
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  • Karen Chung
    5.0 out of 5 stars Exemplary lateral thinking
    Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2003
    Verified Purchase
    I *truly* enjoyed this book - not just for all the fascinating new things I've learned about how the brain works, but because of Ramachandran's whole approach to research and writing. He doesn't seem to take himself, others, or research overly seriously - he exudes warmth, humanity, and humor, while being interesting and rigorous. His creative way of looking at things is an inspiration - it is an approach that we all would do well to apply to our own field of study. We all have lots to learn from dysfunction - in my own field it's the language mistakes of my students that have taught me so much about English. Rather than being something to disdain or be impatient with, dysfunction offers clues to all kinds of human riddles. The key lies in making the effort to find what it can teach us, something Ramachandran does like few others I've encountered. Super, super book.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Dershika Patel
    4.0 out of 5 stars A stimulating guide to understanding the appearance of neurological disorders and their origins
    Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    "Phantoms in the Brain" provides a unique approach by delving deeply into the world of neuroscience, connecting theories and cases together to better understand the functions of the brain. V.S. Ramachandran looks at patients with a wide array of neurological disorders induced by various neurological damage and provides speculation on their impact on the patient by studying the structure and function of the human brain. Throughout the book, he clearly describes the inner workings of each component while sharing deeper insight on how each individual piece works alongside each other to create the full functioning "human" brain. Almost like a neuroscience detective, he uncovers and seeks to answer why patients believe their close ones to be imposters, why others believe themselves to not be paralyzed, or why some see cartoons characters everywhere.

    Overall, Ramachandran provides a fresh perspective to those with an amateur or expert interest in this field by sharing fascinating journeys throughout his career, with patients and colleagues, to help readers understand the mysterious workings of the brain. He attempts to understand various neurological disorders by examining cases he has helped diagnose and treat as well as those seen by others in the field. As he describes each of these cases, he will often migrate from his train of thought and presents a "case inside of a case", beginning one story and moving onto to several others before returning to finish the original thought. Though at times this may be confusing to move through so many schools of thought related to a particular disorder or neurological concept Ramachandran is attempting to describe, it is beneficial to understand his thought process. In each of these diversions, Ramachandran helps to build the story inside of his readers by presenting each detail though it may seem he is rambling throughout the book. By also simultaneously presenting the work of others, such as Oliver Sacks and Sigmund Freud, in these areas, he helps to connect the field together for the reader to better grasp the scope of where neuroscience is today.
    The style of the book is very conversational, almost as if the author is literally writing his own thoughts down verbatim which helps the reader better connect with him. Ramachandran easily moves from topic to topic while keeping the interest of his readers through a confusing maze of information. It is an enjoyable read providing humor and at the same time, deeper philosophical views . This helps push readers to think more about each of the questions Ramachandran proposes and seeks to answer throughout.

    Throughout the book, various neurological diseases and disorders are described. I will briefly provide a few examples of these, such as the phantom limb.

    In the chapter, "The Phantom Within", Ramachandran begins to described his most famous example, the appearance of phantom limbs. This occurs when patient who have lost a limb still possess and feel sensations where the limb was amputated and this often coincides with patients feeling intense pain due to the phantom. It has been noticed, that stimulating certain parts of the stump may elicit responses that duplicate those experienced previously in the missing limb. Patients have also claimed that sensory inputs elsewhere, such as touching the face, may lead to sensations in the limb. Ramachandran observed this when he blindfolded a patient who possessed a phantom arm and began touching his face to observe this re-arrangement. He found that when he touched certain parts of the patient's face, the patient claimed to feel not only the sensation on his face, but also sensation within the missing limb. Ramachandran explains this topographical re-mapping may occur due to mapping within the somatosensory cortex itself. The homunculus shows that the region in the cortex that relays sensory and motor movement to the hand, lies between the region corresponding to the face and to the upper arm in the cortex. This may explain why patients may feel sensation inputs in the face and upper arm due to rewiring and clustering of neural inputs to these regions. For patients with this diagnosis and who experience pain due to the phantom, Ramachandran designs a simple experiment using mirrors to "trick" the visual input received by the brain through visual feedback. This experiment allows the brain to believe it is actually seeing the phantom and actually allow patients to dislodge the pain they feel in the phantom. This shows one of the main points Ramachandran demonstrates to prove brain plasticity, the ability of the change brain to change its neural mapping and connections.

    Following this example, in the chapter, "The Secret Life of James Thurber", Ramachandran begins to describe the appearance of the blind spot and the brain's capacity to "fill" in visual input. The term "filling in" is used to refer to the idea that the brain is able to make an educated guess in its blind spot by filling in the gap, or blind spot, in normal vision. To further guide readers on distinguishing the origins of the blind spot, he describes a series of simple experiments the reader can perform to find their own blind spot. I found this extremely beneficial while reading as it allowed me to participate alongside Ramachandran in discerning how the blind spot came to be on and how the mind processes the blind spot. Moving forward from this, he begins to explain the complex pathway the brain takes to actually "see", from the processes behind distinguishing colors, shapes, size and texture to how the brain takes this feedback and brings together the image.

    “Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data.” Ramachandran states this to demonstrate how the brain makes educated guesses once it has compiled the feedback it has received from the various sensory pathways to create the image inside of our minds.

    Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone as it reads clearly through Ramachandran eloquent and easily understood descriptions of complex neural pathology and anatomy. I would also say read the chapters and understand the overall reasoning he is trying to communicate, such as when he presents a "case inside a case." It is to demonstrate how he is pulling knowledge from previous research or manifestation of the disease to provide evidence. By using case studies and integrating his own research alongside the research of others, readers are able to understand and grasp the problems currently faced in the field today. Through his various methods of approaching a problem and breaking it down manageable thought process, Ramachandran has created something that allows anyone to immerse themselves in the field of neuroscience and begin learning about the complexities behind the human brain.
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  • Mark B. Röttenberg
    5.0 out of 5 stars Neurociência é paixão.
    Reviewed in Brazil on September 2, 2021
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    Ramachandran faz da neurociência um grande e épico poema. Ele nos emociona, nos humaniza, nos apresenta o mundo da neurociência como uma eterna busca da compreensão sobre o ser humano e essa pequena massa, mas que consome aproximadamente 25% de toda a energia que nosso corpo consome. Ramachandran é demasiado humano.
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  • Simon Peter Gabril
    5.0 out of 5 stars This book is incredible!
    Reviewed in Canada on February 4, 2021
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    It's filled with so much information. It's one of the better books I've ever read in my life.
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  • Yoanny corominas
    5.0 out of 5 stars Muy interesante.
    Reviewed in Spain on August 24, 2021
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    De lo mejor que hay sobre el tema.
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  • Dr. KP
    5.0 out of 5 stars Content
    Reviewed in India on May 28, 2021
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    Good book.. Worth a read for those interested in the functionings of the human brain...
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    Dr. KP
    5.0 out of 5 stars Content
    Reviewed in India on May 28, 2021
    Good book.. Worth a read for those interested in the functionings of the human brain...
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  • Cliente de Amazon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente
    Reviewed in Mexico on July 10, 2019
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    Muy buen producto.
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