Blogging on the Brain

Today was the first meeting of my Oliver Sacks reading group, and I actually think it went pretty well! We’re reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which is one of my ALL-TIME favorite books. It was actually recently listed as one of Discovery Magazine’s 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time – a list that includes people like Darwin, Galileo, Einstein, and Aristotle (Freud didn’t even make the list – he was an honorable mention!). Not that we need a list to tell us this book is good, but still. It can’t hurt.

We have a great group of participants (several grad students from the neuroscience program, one from church-state studies, one from sociology, one from English, and the manager of the History department!) and they all seemed to be pretty excited about the book! Most of them had only read the preface and introduction (although several admitted to not being able to keep themselves from reading the first case – a good sign!), but really that’s all it takes to get a feel for the depth and genius of Dr. Sacks.

I’m also trying something brand new (for me) with this group: a wiki! That’s right, I actually set it up myself and invited members and hopefully they’ll get in there soon and start playing around. This is very exciting for me. As with most technology, I’m completely terrified to try it, but when I finally do, I realize it’s really  not all that difficult, and the rewards far outweigh the work it takes to learn it – oh, and thanks to all the super-smart programmers out there that actually make this stuff user-friendly!

So here’s to a semester of wonderful reading and (hopefully) great discussion!

I need some advice.

I’ve been given the (very exciting) opportunity to lead a reading group next semester on Oliver Sacks’ classic book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I love this book. The first time I read this, in fact, was in my very first physiological psychology class in undergrad, and it is, in large part, what made me want to become a neuroscientist.

That being said, I’m sort of at a loss as far as going about a reading/discussion group. The participants will not be getting any credit, won’t be tested, and won’t be there for the purpose of learning neuroanatomy or anything, so I guess I’m having trouble trying to actually pinpoint how to best highlight different aspects of the cases, as well as figuring out what discussion points may come out of those stories. Part of the problem is that Sacks’ writing is so good, I’m not sure what’s left to say at the end of any essay!

So I’ve tried to come up with a few ideas of what I think we should talk about in response to the book (these are still very general, I assume they’ll get more specific depending on the given case for that session).

1. I think one of the most interesting things about the book is that it introduces the idea that things we thought were sort of inherent in our humanity are strongly and specifically based in biological systems in our brains. These specific things (like being able to recognize faces, or know that our limbs belong to us) can be taken away through a simple brain lesion. As far as discussion is concerned, I’d want to talk about maybe what is inherently human, or how many things you can take away before there’s not really a person there anymore. It’s also often hard to read a lot of this without adopting a very reductionistic viewpoint about human behavior – which is something that we could discuss too.

2. Another thing I know Sacks is good at is giving us an idea of how these patients have learned to function despite their injuries/disabilities. I think there are probably lots of lessons to be learned about not only overcoming adversity in general, but it also leads to this sense of awe at how beautifully our brains work when they’re uninjured as well as how they compensate when they’re compromised.

I feel like there was something else I wanted to add in there too, but I seem to have lost my train of thought. I’d be really, really appreciative of any input on this one. Kind of scary that I’ve only been teaching a couple of years and already I feel sort of lost when there’s no clear goal in mind as far as imparting information to be retained. I think for now, my goal for this group is as follows:

To instill in the participants a sense of the beauty and complexity of the brain in healthy as well as injured states, and to investigate the implications of having a strongly biological system underlying our thoughts and behaviors.