“But now we are poised for the greatest revolution of all : understanding the human brain. This will surely be a turning point in the history of the human species for, unlike those earlier revolutions in science, this one is not about the outside world, not about cosmology or biology or physics, but about ourselves, about the very organ that made all those earlier revolutions possible”
An extract from the enthralling book The emerging mind by Vilayanur Ramachandran. I thoroughly agree with Vilayanur as he reveals to us why the study of the human brain could be the most significant of all. The above extract simply projects my own thoughts, for what we know, every other branch of knowledge, could be a result of our own brains playing tricks on us. How could we possibly be assured by our observations of our surroundings when we still have riddles to solve regarding the machine that is processing these observations.
Yes. And yes to everything V.S. Ramachandran, amirite.
“Cotard syndrome”
Remember when living was good and the times were easy and I was reading this, you guys? Well those days are over, and it’s all classes, lab, hell and stress… but we can remember the good times:
While giving a lecture at a hospital in Chennai, India, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran met a young man with a strange problem.
“What brings you to our hospital?” asked Ramachandran, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.
“I am a corpse—I can smell the stench of rotting flesh,” the young man replied.
“Are you saying you are dead?” Ramachandran pressed.
“Yes. I don’t exist,” the man confirmed.
After performing an EEG—which measures and records the electrical activity of the brain—Ramachandran concluded the man must be suffering from Cotard syndrome or “walking corpse syndrome,” a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which people hold the delusional belief that they are dead. via
