June 7, 2009

brain games

there are times i wonder if i should unsubscribe to the new yorker (pretentious? boring? old white man?) but then there are really really great articles that make it ... kinda worth keeping around. ie: this amazing story about behavioral neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, a renegade of science who had a predilection for putting puns in his research papers and uses a simple mirror trick to amputate patient's phantom limbs! i was laughing and feeling good about medicine all at the same time.

read here. if you don't have subscription, email me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

youtube: Ramachandran.
lecture time.
great stuff.
good rrrrrrr's too.

Roger Jr said...

I haven't read the New Yorker article but I'd been meaning to point you to this: the case of the phantom limb problem is well covered in this RadioLab episode from a couple years ago. So fascinating-
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/05/08