![]() Ramachandran's approach is that of a scientist and doctor first, the people he describes are very much patients. They both write about neurological problems, the symptoms expressed as behaviour and anecdotes concerned with the people who suffer from them. Ramachandran is not as touchy-feely an author as Oliver Sacks, but the pair of them cover the same ground. Newsweek magazine named him a member of "The Century Club", one of the "hundred most prominent people to watch" in the 21st century. He has been called “The Marco Polo of neuroscience” by Richard Dawkins and "the modern Paul Broca" by Eric Kandel. He gave the 2003 BBC Reith Lectures and was conferred the title of Padma Bhushan by the President of India in 2007. Ramachandran has been elected to fellowships at All Souls College, Oxford, and the Royal Institution, London (which also awarded him the Henry Dale Medal). Ramachandran’s early work was on visual perception but he is best known for his experiments in behavioral neurology which, despite their apparent simplicity, have had a profound impact on the way we think about the brain. from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. ![]() at Stanley Medical College in Madras, India, and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. He is currently the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, Professor in the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. "Rama" Ramachandran is a neurologist best known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and psychophysics. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier - the human mind - yielding new and provocative insights into the "big questions" about consciousness and the self. Some of his most notable cases:Ī woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial.Ī man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be "wired" for religious experience?Ī woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time.ĭr. ![]() Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments - using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. If you read no other book on Tibetan Buddhism, immerse yourself in this one and applaud."-Matthew T.Neuroscientist V.S. Georges Dreyfus merges personal memoir and outstanding scholarship to draw us into the intellectual life of the Tibetan monastic college, and in so doing he transforms forever our understanding of education and the cultivation of reason in traditional and pre-modern societies. This book both peals away myths and reveals the true depths of Tibetan techniques to train the mind."-Jeffrey Hopkins, author of "Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism" "A remarkable tour de force. ![]() "A rich and fascinating study of Tibetan monastic life, from an author who is not only a leading scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, but who spent many years as a Buddhist monk."-Donald Lopez, author of "Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West" "Georges Dreyfus, extraordinary person and writer, gives us crucial insights into the structure and practices of higher Tibetan education as well as his own fascinating journey leading to his becoming the first Westerner to achieve the highest rank in Tibetan education.
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