The Winds of Mind

Neurologic deficits have been used for years to map out areas of the brain. Two frequently cited examples are Wernicke's and Broca's aphasia. Broca's aphasia corresponds to a lesion of the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus and the surrounding cortex and subcortical white matter of the dominant hemisphere, while Wernicke's aphasia corresponds to a lesion involving the posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus.

V.S. Ramachandran takes neurologic deficits from the less well charted waters of neurology to draw fascinating and important conclusions. He also makes quite a few conjectures. His book answers as many questions as it proposes. Ramachandran is suggesting a research program based on his hypotheses regarding what is really wrong in autism and schizophrenia. Commentary on the contents of this book could easily exceed its length. The numbers of ideas runs quite thick. At times I wished there were more to read. Perhaps that is Ramachandran's way of spurning people to investigate the primary sources, many of them his own.

Ultimately, by answering all the questions, by explaining all the oddball neurologic diseases and syndromes, Ramachandran hopes to unravel what makes us human, how the mind works (and fails to work), and how we should understand ourselves. To me these are the most important questions to answer, and I think we are on the way.

Ramachandran VS. A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers. Pi Press, New York, 2004.