Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Phantoms in the Brain : Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran ISBN: 0-688-17217-2 Publisher: Quill Pub. Date: 07 September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (54 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Ramachandran's "Phantoms"
Comment: If you have read books by Oliver Sacks, M.D. (e.g., The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), this book is in the same genre and is equally interesting and worthwhile. If you haven't--both Sacks and this author are neurologists who do the rest of us a considerable and fascinating favor by telling us about their patients. (Also, maybe you saw the movie, Awakenings, that starred Robin Williams as Sacks, and Robert DeNiro as one of his patients)
Both Sacks and Ramachandran arrange their patient stories under topical headings intended to elucidate the way the brain and body (especially the senses) work together, and also the nature of human personality and even consciousness itself. Ramachandran writes with great clarity, kindness and humor, and his origins in India and Hinduism provide a gently-presented, less-western point of view.
His book also contains some simple but amazing mind-body experiments you can do on yourself and with friends (really). In one, you will become convinced that the top of the desk in front of you is part of your body, since you will feel it when another person touches the desk. Those of you interested in religion will find the chapter "God and Limbic System" especially fascinating. And no, the purpose of his chapter is not to denigrate or analyze away religious experience, but to better understand it, and what it means to be human.
Rating: 5
Summary: A deep, important book written in a disarming style.
Comment: Rama is a brilliant, world renowned neuroscientist. Phantoms recounts personal experience and personal, sometimes humorous observations, and could be read for these qualities alone. It is a great book because of what it has to say. The subject is how the brain works from a conceptual viewpoint, with a focus on consciousness. Typically, the behavior of patients with brain damage suggest hypothesis, and these hypothesis are investigated by additional experimentation, as well as by brain imaging, which can detect which neurons are firing in response to stimuli. The physiology of the brain is considered, but only to the extent necessary to the narrative. A warning to the reader: the book is disarming in that some very difficult material is presented in a wonderfully simple and engaging style; this is not a book to be read in one sitting. I would have benefited from more material in the last chapter on what is the essence of conscious perception; while the ideas are exciting, I need more examples to pin them down. To nitpick, I think Rama. slights the artistic capabilities of animals, and is a little condescending, and perhaps not very knowledgeable, about psychiatry. He makes fun of evolutionary psychology, but also makes use of it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fascinating insight into neurological problems
Comment: I first heard of VS Ramachandran when quite by accident I tuned into his giving the 2003 Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4 (like PBS). His entertaining & instructive style prompted me to tune in a few nights later for the next instalment, and then to go and seek out his published work.
Phantoms in the Brain is an excellent introduction to practical studies of phantom limbs syndrome, and thus into the workings of the human brain and the concept of body imaging.
As a direct consequence of reading this book, I then eagerly awaited his next offering, the transcript of those BBC Lectures.
 |
Title: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat : And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks ISBN: 0684853949 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 02 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by Antonio R. Damasio ISBN: 0156010755 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Descartes' Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio ISBN: 0380726475 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are by Joseph Ledoux ISBN: 0142001783 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
 |
Title: Mapping the Mind by Rita Carter ISBN: 0520224612 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
