Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran provides an introduction to how we study the brain’s deficits using three cool examples:
- Capgras syndrome: where a man looks at his mother and says: “It looks like my mother but she’s an imposter.” How can a person recognise his mother’s face yet feel it’s not her?
- Phantom limbs: why would an amputated limb still hurt? Can this pain be relieved?
- Synaesthesia: Numbers are colours. Notes are colours. Cross-talk between the senses has a higher incidence in creative people: why?