EROCx1 BLOG: Professor Vilayanur S. Ramachandran MD, PhD

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Professor Vilayanur S. Ramachandran MD, PhD

TED TALKS VIDEO LECTURE
V.S. Ramachandran: journeys to the center of your mind

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V.S. Ramachandran is a mesmerizing speaker, able to concretely and simply describe the most complicated inner workings of the brain. His investigations into phantom limb pain, synesthesia and other brain disorders allow him to explore (and begin to answer) the most basic philosophical questions about the nature of self and human consciousness.

Ramachandran is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. He is the author of Phantoms in the Brain, the basis for a Nova special, and A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness; his next book, due out in January 2008, is called The Man with the Phantom Twin: Adventures in the Neuroscience of the Human Brain.

Editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour and author of the critically acclaimed book Phantoms in the Brain that has been translated into eight languages and formed the basis for a two-part series on Channel Four TV UK and a one-hour PBS special in USA. Newsweek magazine recently named him a member of "The Century Club," one of the "hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century."

"Ramachandran is a latter-day Marco Polo, journeying the silk road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind. He returns laden with phenomenological treasures...which, in his subtle and expert telling, yield more satisfying riches of scientific understanding." Richard Dawkins