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Sep 18, 2010

Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it:

Francis Crick—the "Crick" half of the famous "Watson and Crick" duo that discovered the structure of DNA—coined a term (and used it as the title for his book on the subject) which is called "The Astonishing Hypothesis", which represents the idea that all human cognition and perception—every emotion, belief, existential crisis, perceived sight, sound, smell, etc—is essentially the product of (or equivalent to) complex clusters and pathways of neurons and the synaptic More...

35 comments like (34 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

Aerin rated it:

Neuroscience is an interesting field, not just because the human brain is inherently fascinating, but because as a science, it's still in its infancy. Lacking the comprehensive theories that characterize more mature fields like physics and chemistry, neuroscientists are free to speculate wildly based on sparse case studies and scant evidence. In Phantoms in the Brain, which is largely a litany of case studies of "weird" neurological syndromes, Dr. Ramachandran indulges frequently in More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Lithium rated it:

This is a book about psychology, neuroscience, all the good stuff. Ramachandran is delightfully witty and approaches the big and small questions of psychology and neuroscience with curiosity and equal doses of scepticism and speculation alike. One of the truly good things about Phantoms in the Brain is that it is written with humility and humour. Ramachandran manages to expound whilst being hilarious and without 'dumbing down', so to speak.

The book isn't an overtly serious-nature th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 26, 2009

Michael rated it:

HOLY CRAP.

This is the best book about neuroscience and cog sci for a popular audience ever written by someone not named Oliver Sacks.

Ramachandran is, as one of the cover reviews says, profoundly sane, and has a real sense of what you can get from the scientific method and what you can't, and really understands the way questions that used to be philosophical are inching into the realm of the empirical.

He also is sometimes hilarious, really up on the other grea More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Daniel rated it:

This book ended up on my reading list for several reasons, but I didn't decide to really get into it until I noticed that Oliver Sacks had written the foreword. Having read a few of his books, I decided to give Dr. Ramachandran's look into the peculiar world of outlier psychology a shot.

The book is a fascinating read. It talks about the brain's elusive behavior and how it is possible that so many bizarre cases of abnormal psychology exist. Many cases that we would describe as craz More...

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Sep 10, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

Completely in awe of this scientist and his exciting work. I'd be interested to know how Ramachandran's work is viewed by other neurologists in the field (and philosophers too - he ventures daringly into their sovereign terrain a few times) since he adds a coda onto certain chapters explaining many of his own as of yet untested hypotheses and the experiments he still dreams of doing. He often tacitly invites the reader to play detective in-step alongside him and walks the reader through the in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 09, 2010

Brent rated it:

This book is great. I love the author's style of writing (colloquial and accessible), his way of thinking (humble but free), and his philosophy of science (acknowledging human fallibility and the limits of science). It was fascinating learning about the author's own reconciliation of Eastern religion, Western medicine, and science. This was more implied than explicit, but still intrigued me. The subject matter has virtually no overlap, but I was reminded of Reza Aslan in No god but God in that s More...

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May 30, 2011

Steve rated it:

Fascinating stuff. Ramachandran explores the relatively new field of neuroscience, through speculation, hypothesises and some fairly low-tech experimentation – conjuring an image of a brain that perceives reality through complex pathways which can warp reality in strange ways when damaged, revealing to the neuroscientist how these pathways interconnect, how the mind works. Throughout the book examples of patients that have suffered damage to their brains are used to illustrate the function versu More...

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Aug 22, 2010

Josh rated it:

Dr. Ramachandran is a brilliant mind and easy to follow. His ability to walk through case studies and apply them to the theories of medical science in the field makes him incredibly easy to follow and to see the connections between the symptoms and the best theories about the underlying condition.

It's tough for me to read something outside my field because I always wonder what will happen if the author is misrepresenting areas of his field, creating strawmen or simply failing to poin More...

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May 08, 2009

Christopher rated it:

One may not initially find a book on modern psychology particularly interesting, but in the same vein as Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution, V.S. Ramachandran brings the reader on an interesting, enlightening, and entertaining journey through the human mind by exploring abnormal psychological cases. I enjoyed the book for it's conversational quality (it reads as if V.S. Ramachandran is in the room with you, Indian accent and all, explaining the details of his More...

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Apr 23, 2011

Raghu rated it:

This is a path-breaking book investigating the architecture of the human brain. Questions are asked and answered in diverse subjects ranging from 'what is the Self?' and 'what is a religious experience?' to 'why someone with a severed arm feels his phantom fingers and routinely counts on them or feels pain in them'. What is interesting about Dr.Ramachandran's approach is that he probes and experiments with these questions in simple, non-invasive and shall I say, 'non-violent methods' and answers More...

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Aug 07, 2011

Blyden rated it:

Learning about various neurological disorders, the theories behind their causes, and case studies, including many of Ramachandran's own cases was absolutely fascinating! Spellbindingly so! What he has to say about phantom limbs, blindsight, the distinct processing centers of the brain and how they relate to consciousness are likely to reshape your understanding of how the brain works. The implications for sense of self, and identity are also very interesting.

The weak parts of the book More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 20, 2009

Jake rated it:

A solid set of neurology case-studies, in the tradition of Oliver Sacks. Ramachandran seems to have made his name explaining how different kinds of phantom limb syndromes function, and he's at his best when he's explaining the weird and miraculous ways the brain copes with the sudden loss of a part of the body. Also very good is the middle portion of the book, when he expands his survey to related neurological problems, including temporal lobe epilepsy (which seems to put some patients into di More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 11, 2009

Bogdan rated it:

A book of reviews of patients with different brain-related diseases, a method that - the author claims - help us gain insight into the workings of the human brain. And to me he seems right. In his own admission, much of what he suggests is speculative, but there's enough science in there too.

I've read about people not seeing with their left eye, but still perceiving information from the blind area, people losing vision only to have the brain fill in the missing world with, e.g., cart More...

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Mar 30, 2011

Ugh rated it:

Essentially a collection of very interesting case studies (plus embellishments) that illustrate how, with nothing more than access to a world's worth of highly unusual patients, a wealth of McGuiver-esque ingenuity, and the background knowledge that comes with being one of the world's top neurologists, you can shed light on some of neuroscience's must puzzling conundrums. VS comes across as funny, practical, and likeable, and towards the end he unfurls some lengthier theories that are not far sh More...

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Jan 19, 2011

Sumanth rated it:

This book is intelligent, simple, scientific, and humorous. Galen once believed that wounds and diseases are mirrors into the mind and body. Ramachandran just runs with that notion and actually uses mirrors to mitigate and sometimes cure the symptoms of certain brain disorders. His work into the nature of neural remapping is clearly some of the best simplification of the complex processes underlying grand-scale brain activity. After reading the book, studying neuroscience with Ramachandran, and More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 31, 2008

Mark rated it:

This starts off as an extremely good book about the author's direct experience and experiments dealing with the phenomenon of phantom limbs. It discusses the current knowledge of how certain parts of the brain works, and it relates some simple experiments that demonstrate how the brain-body connection is much stranger than we assume it to be.

But sadly the book trudges steadily down hill from that beginning. The book starts with the doctor's strongest specialty. Then it delves into More...

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Feb 23, 2010

Ravi rated it:

Brilliant book. I regularly recommend it to my medical students. It rekindles an interest in neurology that many students find daunting in its complexity and variety. Slightly technical for the non-medic, but well worth the effort. This leads one to a philosophical inquiry as well. I wish Ramachandran (and Blakesley) would update this book with information from the functional MRI studies that are pouring in now.
Some of the extensive notes are irritating in the sense that they are at the ba More...

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Jan 24, 2011

Aaron rated it:

Despite brief and infrequent flashbacks of some of my college Psych classes, by which I mean my eyes would start glazing over while looking at BioPsych babble like "angular gyrus", "thalami", and "sensory homunculus", this book was an enlightening experience. Dr. Ramachandran brings his life's work - which is basically the study of human freak shows - into the layman's hands with his boyish energy and charismatic enthusiasm and humor. He takes something the size o More...

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Oct 25, 2011

Richelle rated it:

I don't read as much non-fiction as I feel I should sometimes but this book caught my eye right away. An exploration of phantom limbs and what they can tell us about our brains, this book is very detailed and yet very accessible at the same time - a must for me with any non-fiction book. Ramachandran writes with conversational ease and many of the case studies are fascinating. The forward is written by Oliver Sacks, one of the most interesting and easily recognizable figures in neurology (and o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 14, 2011

Zachary rated it:

The topic and subject matter of this book might seem both overly grim and too technical to enjoy - but that would be selling this book badly short. Not only is a fascinating discussion of the function and malfunction of our remarkable brain and nervous systems, but it is well written, funny, and moving. Ramachandran is an amazing physician, and the compassion he feels for his patients, and the suffers of neurological disorders in general, is palpable. Plus, it is full of those fascinating storie More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Rahul rated it:

This book is the most amazing book which I have read in a long time. Written in clear crisp language, this book provides a great insight into human brain derived from experiments. It is the experiments which makes the book interesting.

This book also provides some insights into long standing questions which great minds have been pondering about:
- What is consciousness?
- Why Religion/God?

I think brain is one of the fields which will see a huge development in coming ye More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2010

Broodingferret rated it:

Phantoms in the Brain is a wonderful collection of case studies, each of which testifies to the astonishing, albeit often terrible, ways in which an individual's perceptions can change on account of brain malfunctions. Ramachandran's writing style is clear and concise, as well as humorous, though he does tend to hypothesize a little too wildly at times for my taste. His research, however, is well-cited and fascinating and I recommend Phantoms in the Brain as a good pop-science intro (but only More...

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Aug 04, 2011

Yasuhiko added it

実をいうと、８章までしか読んでいない。

でも、それまでに十分すぎるほどの内容が詰め込まれている。彼のひらめき、探偵のように謎を解いていく姿、そして、脳がどれだけ不思議と魅力にあふれているか、

読み手が溺れてしまうぐらい詰まっている。

実際、溺れそうになったので笑、

いったん、ページを閉じて、僕の研究に戻ることにした。 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 09, 2010

Nita rated it:

I loved this book. Ramachandran is a genius. He's taken huge intuitive leaps toward explicating some of the more bizarre neurological phenomena on the books, like phantom limbs, synaesthesia, dysmorphic disorder, etc. The book is a great blend of science and storytelling: the narrative is funny and engaging, and the subject matter is fascinating. It's amazing to think that the frontier in neuroscience is still wide enough for somebody to take a maverick, sort of Sherlock Holmes approach towa More...

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Dec 16, 2009

gretta rated it:

i love my brain

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2011

Kent rated it:

I'm only two chapters in but I already know this book is a badass motherfucker. For one, it was almost called "The man who mistook his foot for a penis." For secondary, this neurologist / sleuth discovered how to cure people of phantom limb pain and in the process made an amazing discovery about the mind.

from p. 7: "...it is a physician's duty always to ask himself, 'What does it feel like to be in the patient's shoes?'"

For tertiary, this man is the f More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 30, 2011

Jessica rated it:

This book, and it's author, has had a major influence on the direction of the research I am doing as part of my bachelors of science/master of arts degree program in music therapy.

I recommend any

fan of this author or the subject to watch and read his lectures available online.

"During the last 3 decades, neuroscientists throughout the world have probed the nervous system in fascinating detail and have learned a great deal about the laws of mental life and about More...

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Aug 10, 2010

Richard rated it:

(Selected for the Cognitive Science Reading & Discussion Group in July and August 2010.)

Excellent. Not as good as it could have been, but that might be due to my biases — what I disliked might be someone else’s favorite aspect.

This was clearly patterned after Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat — indeed, Oliver Sacks wrote the introduction.

It has been many years since I’ve read Sacks’ book, but I suspect I liked that one more. The principle tr More...

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Dec 08, 2011

Cailin rated it:

Ramachandran applies non-traditional testing methods to patients who exhibit bizarre behavior, all resulting from neurological disorders. His case studies range from patients who believe they have phantom limbs or pregnancies, to ones who think their parents are impostures (simulacra of themselves). His book is very accessible and incredibly fascinating, whether or not you have a background in the cognitive sciences. The studies are broken into themed chapters, and the writing is footnote and fi More...

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