Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran is certainly internationally renowned for uncovering answers towards the deep and quirky queries of human character that few researchers have dared to address. His vivid insights about the mind are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments-using such low-tech equipment such as natural cotton swabs, glasses of water, and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who’ve bizarre neurological disorders offers shed brand-new about Phantoms in the mind: Probing the Mysteries from the Human Mind light within the deep architecture of the mind, and what these results reveal about who we are, how we construct the body picture, why we giggle or become stressed out, why we may believe in God, and how exactly we make decisions, deceive ourselves, and dream. A few of his perhaps most obviously cases:

A woman paralyzed for the remaining part of her body who believes she is lifting a holder of beverages with both hands offers a distinctive opportunity to test Freud’s theory of denial.

A man who insists he’s speaking with God problems us to inquire: Could we be ‘wired’ for spiritual experience?

A woman who hallucinates cartoon heroes illustrates how, in a way, we are all hallucinating, all the time.

Dr. Ramachandran’s inspired medical detective function pushes the boundaries of medicine’s last great frontier-the individual mind-yielding fresh and provocative insights in to the ‘big queries’ about awareness and the personal.