This is, simply put, an awesome, instructive book on the many ways things can go wrong with the brain, with the weirdest results. V.S. Ramachandran describes the work he has done with patients like Nancy, who sees cartoon characters running around part of her visual field even though she knows they don’t really exist. There’s also Arthur, who thinks his parents are impostors, even though they look and sound the same. And there’s also many amputees whose phantom limbs help to illustrate how our brain comes up with its body image.

Throughout the first few chapters, Ramachandran describes the simple yet ingenious experiments he and his graduate students perform to discover more about these patients’ brains and, in some cases, alleviate their symptoms. He also describes the implications this has for our understanding of normal brains, lucidly and with deft touches of light humour.

In the later chapters, he becomes more speculative, describing other syndromes he’s planning to do more research on. These chapters are weaker but don’t detract too much from the book as a whole. The last chapter is also pretty heavy-going, in which he outlines his theory of consciousness. But again, the whole book is well worth the read. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed it so much and just borrowed a couple of Oliver Sacks’ books from my sister who’s a neurology medical student.