Brown
23rd July 2007, 07:51 AM
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
and Other Clinical Tales
By Oliver Sacks (1985, Harper & Row, 243 pages)
-----------------
In the human experience, there is nothing as wonderful, or as strange, as the human brain.
The brain is a remarkable instrument. The brain evaluates, computes, remembers, controls, dreams, recognizes, interprets, imagines, predicts, and performs a myriad of other functions. It is truly difficult to appreciate the capacity and versatility of the human brain.
Curiously, however, one can develop a greater appreciation for the brain when one views the behavior of individuals whose brains are—for lack of a better word—abnormal.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a collection of tales from a neurologist who has studied individuals whose brains differ from those of the majority.
Imagine, for example, a condition in which your brain was unable to recognize human faces, including the faces of people you’d known all your life. Perhaps you’d mistake a grandfather clock for a person, or you’d confuse your shoe with your own foot, or you’d be unable to recognize a rose that you were holding in your hand, although you could recognize it immediately upon smelling its aroma.
These very challenges faced the music teacher whose case of visual agnosia became the lead story in Dr. Sacks’s book. This teacher, looking for his hat, took hold of his wife's head and tried to put it on his own head. He literally mistook his wife for a hat.
We all take for granted the ability to recognized loved ones, to interpret scenes around us. How strange we should be largely unaware of this remarkable ability, until Dr. Sacks describes a person who lacked it.
Imagine now having an impaired sense of proprioception: an inability to know what your own hands or arms or legs are doing. We take it for granted that we are aware of our bodies and can control them without effort, but Dr. Sacks introduces us to a lady who lost her sense of proprioception.
Imagine losing the concept of “left.” Imagine hearing songs all the time in your head, as though someone had left a radio on. Imagine being able to “see” a ten-digit number as being a prime number.
In tale after tale, Dr. Sacks introduces us to patients who have these conditions. Dr. Sacks how the conditions came about, their bizarre consequences, and how people adapt to them.
Imagine that all words in spoken language sound like gibberish, but that you can still deduce meaning from context, feeling and tone. Now imagine that you can understand the words, but that you have no sensitivity to context, feeling or tone. Now further imagine that a group of people, some having the first condition and some having the second, are laughing like fiends as they listen to a speech by President Ronald Reagan. Why are they laughing? Dr. Sacks explains, and his explanation is both funny and disturbing at the same time.
Many of the conditions Dr. Sacks describes have reached the public consciousness. An inability to form new memories, described by Dr. Sacks as a condition affecting a man who thought he was perpetually in 1945, was the basis for the 2000 film “Memento.” Dr. Sacks also describes autistic savants, which have of late been the subject of popular news reports, and Dustin Hoffman portrayed an autistic savant in the 1988 film “Rain Man.” Dr. Sacks also introduces patients having Tourette’s syndrome, and individuals with Tourette’s have recently been the subject of a number of documentaries and television programs.
The stories Dr. Sacks tells are funny, disconcerting, heart-breaking, inspiring, baffling and downright weird, but always enlightening. By describing the experiences of his patients, Dr. Sacks provides valuable insights into the deep mystery and remarkable majesty of the human brain.
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and Other Clinical Tales
By Oliver Sacks (1985, Harper & Row, 243 pages)
-----------------
In the human experience, there is nothing as wonderful, or as strange, as the human brain.
The brain is a remarkable instrument. The brain evaluates, computes, remembers, controls, dreams, recognizes, interprets, imagines, predicts, and performs a myriad of other functions. It is truly difficult to appreciate the capacity and versatility of the human brain.
Curiously, however, one can develop a greater appreciation for the brain when one views the behavior of individuals whose brains are—for lack of a better word—abnormal.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a collection of tales from a neurologist who has studied individuals whose brains differ from those of the majority.
Imagine, for example, a condition in which your brain was unable to recognize human faces, including the faces of people you’d known all your life. Perhaps you’d mistake a grandfather clock for a person, or you’d confuse your shoe with your own foot, or you’d be unable to recognize a rose that you were holding in your hand, although you could recognize it immediately upon smelling its aroma.
These very challenges faced the music teacher whose case of visual agnosia became the lead story in Dr. Sacks’s book. This teacher, looking for his hat, took hold of his wife's head and tried to put it on his own head. He literally mistook his wife for a hat.
We all take for granted the ability to recognized loved ones, to interpret scenes around us. How strange we should be largely unaware of this remarkable ability, until Dr. Sacks describes a person who lacked it.
Imagine now having an impaired sense of proprioception: an inability to know what your own hands or arms or legs are doing. We take it for granted that we are aware of our bodies and can control them without effort, but Dr. Sacks introduces us to a lady who lost her sense of proprioception.
Imagine losing the concept of “left.” Imagine hearing songs all the time in your head, as though someone had left a radio on. Imagine being able to “see” a ten-digit number as being a prime number.
In tale after tale, Dr. Sacks introduces us to patients who have these conditions. Dr. Sacks how the conditions came about, their bizarre consequences, and how people adapt to them.
Imagine that all words in spoken language sound like gibberish, but that you can still deduce meaning from context, feeling and tone. Now imagine that you can understand the words, but that you have no sensitivity to context, feeling or tone. Now further imagine that a group of people, some having the first condition and some having the second, are laughing like fiends as they listen to a speech by President Ronald Reagan. Why are they laughing? Dr. Sacks explains, and his explanation is both funny and disturbing at the same time.
Many of the conditions Dr. Sacks describes have reached the public consciousness. An inability to form new memories, described by Dr. Sacks as a condition affecting a man who thought he was perpetually in 1945, was the basis for the 2000 film “Memento.” Dr. Sacks also describes autistic savants, which have of late been the subject of popular news reports, and Dustin Hoffman portrayed an autistic savant in the 1988 film “Rain Man.” Dr. Sacks also introduces patients having Tourette’s syndrome, and individuals with Tourette’s have recently been the subject of a number of documentaries and television programs.
The stories Dr. Sacks tells are funny, disconcerting, heart-breaking, inspiring, baffling and downright weird, but always enlightening. By describing the experiences of his patients, Dr. Sacks provides valuable insights into the deep mystery and remarkable majesty of the human brain.
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