Phantoms In the Brain V S Ramachandran book
A patient suffered stroke that paralysed the left side of her body, but she believes that her left arm is working fine. In asking who’s this paralysed arm, she says this belongs to her brother.
Other patient due side effect of stroke, he started laugh uncontrollably and ultimately died due to laughing.
One young patient had accident and suffered head injury. He thinks her parents are impostors who looks like his parents but are not his real parent.
None of these patients are crazy, hence psychiatrists’ treatment would be waste of time, rather each of them suffers from damage to a specific part of the brain.
The fascinated part is that many of us encounters small stroke which neither self nor other notices. Such stroke affects part of brain and outcome is odd behaviour which can’t be explained.
Like in one patient part of brain Hippocampus is removed during surgery. Hippocampus is responsible for memory, due to the removal patient is not able to form new memories, yet he recalls everything that happened before the surgery.
One patient suffered small stroke and on the way to recovery. He knows every other thing of his life and talk with doctor normally. However, when dr asked “What’s Seventeen Minus Three?” – he was not able to answer it. This means each of us has a number center in the region of the left angular gyrus. If we suffer stroke there than we can’t perform easiest numerical computational tasks.
We have body map, under which as example index finger is associated some point at our face. So if you touch that point the sensation is felt in finger.
And below blew my mind:
There is terms in medical pseudocyesis or false pregnancy.
This happens to woman who wanted to have baby badly. Under this they develop all signs of pregnancy except baby. Their abdomens swell to enormous proportions, aided by sway back posture, nipples become pigmented, morning sickness, sense of fatal movements and menstruating cycles stopped.
This shows power of mind.
The book gives us different prospective of mind and life. One become more acceptable to others view point.
This book has no relevance to stock market. You may like if you have interest to know more about mind or philosophy.
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