I am enjoying this book. Its an awesome write – one which twists you around. Which distorts your belief system. and which “attempts” to tell you the truth.
One of my friends once told me she hates it when someone gives her unprocessed or semi processed information. “It can be very dangerous” – she claimed. But I don’t mind talking about things that are semi processed or half done. It is much more exciting. It leaves the understanding to the receiver. Interpretation is the elixir of life.
I am through with 60 % of this book. And I want to record my thoughts now.
Some picks from the Preface and Chapters
- 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.
- Of a patient – I glance at his medical chart, noting that he has suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy since early adolescence, and that is when “God began talking” to him. Do his religious experiences have anything to do with his temporal lobe seizures?
- Are all of us unfulfilled poets? Do we each have an untapped potential for beautiful verse and rhyme hidden in the recesses of our right hemisphere?
- Each hemisphere controls the movements of the muscles on the opposite side of your body. Your right brain makes your left arm wave and your left brain allows your right leg to kick a ball.
- The reason these two kinds of smiles (spontaneous and forced) differ is that different brain regions handle them, and only one of them contains a specialized “smile circuit”. A spontaneous smile is produced by the basal ganglia, without the thinking part of your brain involved.
At this point of the book, I was fascinated and attracted. Especially due to the fact that he was traversing science and spirituality with such ease and comfort. Love at first chapter. Wanted more of it, and I took it slowly.
- To their amazement they found that when they touched the monkey’s face, the cells in the brain corresponding to the “Dead” hand started firing vigorously. It means that you can change the map; you can alter the brain circuitry of an adult animal, and connections can be modified over distances spanning a centimeter or more.
Well let me talk a bit here. This chapter is where he starts writing about his experiments with “Phantom limbs”- The phenomenon wherein a person imagines the existence of an organ which has been amputated from his body. He talks about how it is possible that the brain can be led to believe that something exists, when it really isn’t there. This happens because the brain receives sufficient reinforcement of false data, and it would need a very twisted approach to make the person believe otherwise – that the arm/organ doesn’t really exist. This twisted person for his patients was a good old simple Mirror.
What he is quoting here seems to be a re-wording of this popular saying – truth is nothing but a lie told well. And if you contradict the truth (?) repeatedly, the brain can be led to believe otherwise.
Phew! Confusing and hard – but I give it all the benefit of doubt and continue reading.
The Zombie in the brain.
- When someone who is obviously blind can reach out and grab a letter, rotate the letter into the correct position and mail it through an opening she cannot “see”, the ability seems almost paranormal. To understand what Diane is experiencing, we need to abandon all our commonsense notions about what seeing really is. In the next few pages, you will discover that there is a great deal more to perception than meets the eye.
He discussed perception – and the difference between seeing and perceiving. Lovely chapter, but ended on a highly ambiguous note.
Well, there is lots of magic in this book. It capitalizes on our ignorance of neuroscience. It thrills us with philosophical and spiritual conclusions. It is supported by statistical agreement and human judgment.
And I am dilly-dallying between believing what he is saying, doubting it completely or just being fascinated and moving ahead.
Do read the book! It is my introduction to an unfinished science, a science which can probably gain more credibility when converted to a usable form of technology – and maybe a few steps more than Dr.VS Ramachandran’s mirror box.
I am not laughing at his years of hard work. I should “study” more first. But I find his connotations distracting, and the more I read, the less I believe him.
I will complete the book and get back.
