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The TELL-TALE BRAIN
A Neuroscientist‘s Quest for What Makes Us Human
V. S. RAMACHANDRAN
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON Copyright © 2011 by V. S. Ramachandran All rights reserved Figure 7.1: Illustration from Animal Architecture by Karl von Frisch and Otto von Frisch, illustrations copyright © 1974 by Turid Holldobler, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ramachandran, V. S. The tell-tale brain: a neuroscientist‘s quest for what makes us human/ V. S. Ramachandran.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-0-393-08058-2 1. Neurosciences—Popular works. 2. Neurology—Popular works. 3. Brain—Popular works. I. Title. RC351.A45 2011 616.8—dc22 2010044913 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT For my mother, V. S. Meenakshi, and my father, V. M. Subramanian For Jaya Krishnan, Mani, and Diane And for my ancestral sage Bharadhwaja, who brought medicine down from the gods to mortals
CONTENTS PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION NO MERE APE CHAPTER 1 PHANTOM LIMBS AND PLASTIC BRAINS CHAPTER 2 SEEING AND KNOWING CHAPTER 3 LOUD COLORS AND HOT BABES: SYNESTHESIA CHAPTER 4 THE NEURONS THAT SHAPED CIVILIZATION CHAPTER 5 WHERE IS STEVEN? THE RIDDLE OF AUTISM CHAPTER 6 THE POWER OF BABBLE: THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE CHAPTER 7 BEAUTY AND THE BRAIN: THE EMERGENCE OF AESTHETICS CHAPTER 8 THE ARTFUL BRAIN: UNIVERSAL LAWS CHAPTER 9 AN APE WITH A SOUL: HOW INTROSPECTION EVOLVED EPILOGUE GLOSSARY NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
PREFACE There is not, within the wide range of philosophical inquiry, a subject more intensely interesting to all who thirst for knowledge, than the precise nature of that important mental superiority which elevates the human being above the brute —EDWARD BLYTH
FOR THE PAST QUARTER CENTURY I HAVE HAD THE MARVELOUS privilege of being able to work in the emerging field of cognitive neuroscience. This book is a distillation of a large chunk of my life‘s work, which has been to unravel—strand by elusive strand—the mysterious connections between brain, mind, and body. In the chapters ahead I recount my investigations of various aspects of our inner mental life that we are naturally curious about. How do we perceive the world? What is the so-called mind-body connection? What determines your sexual identity? What is consciousness? What goes wrong in autism? How can we account for all of those mysterious faculties that are so quintessentially human, such as art, language, metaphor, creativity, self-awareness, and even religious sensibilities? As a scientist I am driven by an intense curiosity to learn how the brain of an ape—an ape!— managed to evolve such a godlike array of mental abilities. My approach to these questions has been to study patients with damage or genetic quirks in different parts of their brains that produce bizarre effects on their minds or behavior. Over the years I have worked with hundreds of patients afflicted (though some feel they are blessed) with a great diversity of unusual and curious neurological disorders. For example, people who ―see‖ musical tones or ―taste‖ the textures of everything they touch, or the patient who experiences himself leaving his body and viewing it from above near the ceiling. In this book I describe what I have learned from these cases. Disorders like these are always baffling at first, but thanks to the magic of the scientific method we can render them comprehensible by doing the right experiments. In recounting each case I will take you through the same stepby-step reasoning—occasionally na