A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers

A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers | V. S. Ramachandran | Scintillates with Profound Implications

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A Brief Tour of Hu...

	A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers V. S. Ramachandran Pi Press, 2005 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 43 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great book!

I recommend this book without hesitation. It presents a brief survey of different studies conducted by Ramachandran. In addition, Ramachandran talks about his hunches about certain issues such as the relation between neuroscience and arts, implications of mirror neurons in communication and culture and what cross-activations may mean in terms of on going human evolution. Except the chapter where he speculates about the relation between arts and neuroscience, I throughly enjoyed every page of this book. I should also state that Ramachandran acknowledges that previously mentioned chapter is completely speculative and his ideas about this topic is yet to be developed.

The most striking idea in this book for me is Ramachandran's explanation of metaphors based on cross-activations of neighboring, or approximate areas in the brain. It is a beautiful theory that makes very much sense.

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Scintillates with Profound Implications

This book is short and not tightly structured- but here it hardly matters. You could spend hours thinking about the profound implications of each short chapter- or even some paragraphs. Ramachandran has the confidence of genius, and writes with an appealing kind of low key brashness. Shorter and more cursory than his more famous "Phantoms in the Brain", yet manages to survey even wider horizons. Definitely a book to provoke amazing thoughts.

Awesome book - easy read

Dr. Ramachandran has taken the world of nueroscience to common people. The language is easy to understand and the flow is very good. The book consciously stays on the medical side of things, not delving into spirituality. It is often easy to do that especially when dealing with brain, mind and consiousness, and with his eastern background. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind trying to relate to some of the wellknown concepts in spirituality (like the soul) and seeing if there is any relevance in extending some of his neuro/brain concepts there.

There are a few speeches Dr. R gave that is in youtube and TED. Especially the TED one is a good abridged version of this book. One gets the impression while you read this book that there are 100 other researches that can be performed on the brain to understand better on how things work (eg. details on sleep is very less known, dealing with certain pains that don't seem to have any origins etc)

Again, very well written book, and I am hoping he is working on more interesting research and books soon.

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Brief but interesting

The "Brief Tour" part of the title is accurate, as this book is a relatively quick read. It jumps between interesting case studies and Ramachandran's theories which still await experimental evidence. He freely admits as much, but makes a strong case for his theories as is. A worthwhile read.

Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the mysteries of the mind

Though it doesn't give you outright answers to the mysteries of the mind, this book, written by the expert in the field, will certainly give you much to think about! It talks about a bunch of different neurological diseases and how they affect cognitive function, and what that tells us about normal cognitive function! It's an interesting, quick read, similar to the likes of Oliver Sacks' books, but not as repetitive. I recommend it to anyone, science background or not.

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