Ada yang pernah dengar VS Ramachandran?
Salam,
RM
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>From Chennai to California, he unlocks brains
Express News Service
Posted online: Saturday, December 18, 2004 at 0008
hours IST
Updated: Saturday, December 18, 2004 at 1140 hours IST
December 17: The patients he describes are
fascinating. His experiments are simple and ingenious.
If you are at all interested in how your brain works,
this is a book you must read—Francis Crick, Nobel
Laureate, commenting on Phantoms in the Brain
In California, they call Chennai-born scientist V S
Ramachandran (53) the Sherlock Holmes of neuroscience.
The name probably stuck because the award-winning
co-author of Phantoms in the Brain drawls lines from
his favourite detective to describe simple but
original experiments that are unlocking deep mysteries
of the brain, behaviour, the mind and consciousness.
Like, why do we laugh, cry or recognise a face?
Named by Newsweek among the 100 people to watch in the
next century, San Diego-based Ramachandran teaches
neurology and psychology and heads the Centre for
Brain and Cognition at the University of California.
‘‘The brain is opportunistic,’’ he says. ‘‘My
experiments over the last 10 years could have been
done by any fourth-year medical student in a dinky
medical college.’’
Ramachandran is best known for his experiments on
understanding phantom pain—the sensation that a
missing (amputated) limb still exists and is sensitive
to touch.
One of his finest neuroscience experiments sounds
almost too easy. Patients with amputated arms watched
a mirror reflection of their normal arm.
‘‘When fingers of the intact arm were moved, the
patient felt a relief from pain in his phantom arm,’’
he describes. The experiment has since led to a
pathbreaking understanding of phantom pain and its
therapy.
Trained as a physician from Stanley Medical College in
Chennai, Ramachandran published his first
international paper on visual perception as a
20-year-old.
A fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in
Behavioural Sciences at Stanford, he also researches
imitation. ‘‘When humans become extinct, orangutans
will inherit the earth,’’ he says.
Ever wondered why most metaphors in languages (like
cannot put a finger on it) are body-based?
Ramachandran is probing the neural basis for metaphors
and the brain’s response to them. He will speak at the
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Colaba at 5
pm on Saturday.
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