Biology Honors Book Club
Phantoms in the Brain was published in August 19, 1998 and was written by Sandra Blakeslee and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and is about certain cases that the latter author had witnessed or conducted. V. S. Ramachandran has seen how the brain can react in strange ways to major physical changes and decided to document all these strange occurrences in an effort to explain the mysteries of the brain. He sets the book up to showcases the oddities in our brains with a large portion of the book focusing on phantom limbs, a sensation that feels like an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like a uterus) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. The rest is divided into short tutorials of brain functions and other mental illnesses. An example of one of the strange illnesses mentioned is the Capgras delusion, a disorder where a person believes that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member (even a pet) has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. In a case described by the author there was a man who believed his parents were impostors and even when he accepted that they were his parents he acted emotionally distant.Aside from these small cases accounts and and explanations the book also included various images including illusion-causing images and x-rays of brains.
A rather fascinating portion of the book was when Dr. Ramachandran mentioned the possibility of our brain containing multiple “selves” one of them, called the zombie, is in charge of bodily functions and acts without our “selves” knowledge of it doing so. The other half is the one we often refer to as ourselves, it contains our memories, controls our interactions with others, it’s what we would call our personality. Both of these selves are so closely entwined into one whole operating “self”, one that even has the capacity to question itself, to question whether a higher being exists, The author stated that, “The physical species Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self−awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor by−product of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. Are we? I don't think brain science alone, despite all its triumphs, will ever answer that question. But that we can ask the question at all is, to me, the most puzzling aspect of our existence.”
The book showed a large variety of odd mental conditions and though they were entertaining they took away from the main focus of phantom limbs and redirected it towards some piece of existential commentary that seemed and rushed out of place. The author often switched from case to case and cutting off into a dull but easily understood explanation of how the different parts of the brain worked in harmony with one another. Through and through the book was enjoyable, strange, and curious, and my only complaint is that each section seemed too short, too rushed, it felt as though there deserved to be more. But I do recommend this book, it’s easy to read -though you might have to push through reading the explanations of brain functions a few times, provides interesting scenarios, and leaves you a generous amount of food for thought.