Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales

Sacks has written a riveting and somewhat frightening series of case studies about things that, with a little less knowledge, would certainly fit into the supernatural category:
  • a man who lost all sense of smell in an accident dreams of being a dog and sniffing flowers, and awakens to find he can smell again;
  • an artist slowly loses the ability to distinguish people from objects (the Mr. Magoo syndrome), but his fans think it just makes his artwork better;
  • a woman who cannot perceive one side of her body at all, even when presented with a mirror;
  • a man whose left and right sides of the brain continually are at war, one hand buttoning him up while the tries to unbutton him.
Sachs provides enough strange-but-true stories to show us just how little we know about the human brain. A must read for anyone who wants the facts behind all those "believe it or not" books and shows.

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