From Ramachandran's Notebook

  • By Vilayanur Ramachandran
  • Posted 10.23.01
  • NOVA

In cases of phantom limbs, amputees and even those born without one or more limbs feel pain and other sensations in their missing body parts. Here, read neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran's vivid descriptions of his experiences with phantom-limb patients and how he has managed to understand their singular dilemmas and thereby help them.

Launch Interactive Printable Version

Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran recounts some of his most intriguing cases of patients with phantom limbs.

This feature originally appeared on the site for the NOVA program Secrets of the Mind.

Vilayanur Ramachandran has been called a Sherlock Holmes of neuroscience. Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, and adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, Ramachandran has brilliantly sleuthed his way through some of the strangest maladies of the human mind.

Sources

The non-introductory portions of this article were excerpted with permission from Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, by V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee (Quill/William Morrow, 1998).

Credits

Photos

(all)
Corbis Images

Related Links

  • Musical Minds

    Oliver Sacks explores how the power of music can make the brain come alive.

  • The Electric Brain

    What is the nature of consciousness, and how does it arise? Neuroscientist Rodolfo Lliní¡s has some answers.

  • Mirror Neurons

    A recently discovered system in the brain may help explain why we humans can get so worked up watching other people.

  • Forgetting Chronic Pain

    To the nervous system, memories and chronic pain are strikingly similar. Can we use the same technique to erase them?

Close

You need the Flash Player plug-in to view this content.