The Mind's Eye

The Mind's Eye

Oliver Sacks

Language: English

Pages: 288

ISBN: 0307473023

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


With compassion and insight, Dr. Oliver Sacks again illuminates the mysteries of the brain by introducing us to some remarkable characters, including Pat, who remains a vivacious communicator despite the stroke that deprives her of speech, and Howard, a novelist who loses the ability to read. Sacks investigates those who can see perfectly well but are unable to recognize faces, even those of their own children. He describes totally blind people who navigate by touch and smell; and others who, ironically, become hyper-visual. Finally, he recounts his own battle with an eye tumor and the strange visual symptoms it caused. As he has done in classics like The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, Dr. Sacks shows us that medicine is both an art and a science, and that our ability to imagine what it is to see with another person's mind is what makes us truly human.

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was surprised to find, as a nurse reminded him, that he could still write, even though he could not read; the medical term, she said, was “alexia sine agraphia.” Howard was incredulous—surely reading and writing went together; how could he lose one but not the other?2 The nurse suggested that he sign his name; he hesitated, but once he started, the writing seemed to flow all by itself, and he followed his signature with two or three sentences. The act of writing seemed quite normal to him,

probably would not recognize me, either. Although such examples may seem comical, they are sometimes quite devastating. People with very severe prosopagnosia may be unable to recognize their spouse, or to pick out their own child in a group of others. Jane Goodall also has a certain degree of prosopagnosia. Her problems extend to recognizing chimpanzees as well as people—thus, she says, she is often unable to distinguish individual chimps by their faces. Once she knows a particular chimp well,

completely colorblind following a head injury.10 Mr. I. was distressed by his sudden inability to perceive colors, but even more by his total inability to evoke them in memory or imagery. Even his occasional visual migraines were now drained of color. Patients like Mr. I. suggest that the coupling of perception and imagery is very close in the higher parts of the visual cortex.11 · · · Sharing characteristics and even sharing neural areas or mechanisms is one thing, but Kosslyn and others go

there is good evidence that reading Braille can cause strong activation of the visual parts of the cortex, as Sadato, Pascual-Leone, et al. have reported. Such activation, even in the absence of any input from the retina, may constitute a crucial part of the neural basis for the mind’s eye. Dennis also spoke of how the heightening of his other senses had increased his sensitivity to the most delicate nuances in other people’s speech and self-presentation. He could recognize many of his patients

Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Harrington, Anne. 1987. Medicine, Mind, and the Double Brain: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Head, Henry. 1926. Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Head, Henry, and Gordon Holmes. 1911. Sensory disturbances from cerebral lesions. Brain 34: 102–254. Hefter, Rebecca L., Dara S. Manoach, and

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