The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human
by V. S. Ramachandran. W. W. Norton, 2011
While giving a lecture at a hospital in Chennai, India, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran met a young man with a strange problem.
“What brings you to our hospital?” asked Ramachandran, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.
“I am a corpse—I can smell the stench of rotting flesh,” the young man replied.
“Are you saying you are dead?” Ramachandran pressed.
“Yes. I don’t exist,” the man confirmed.
After performing an EEG—which measures and records the electrical activity of the brain—Ramachandran concluded the man must be suffering from Cotard syndrome or “walking corpse syndrome,” a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which people hold the delusional belief that they are dead.
Cotard syndrome is one of many unusual mental afflictions Ramachandran discusses in his new book, The Tell-Tale Brain. He also looks at Capgras syndrome (when a person believes those around him have been replaced by imposters), apraxia (when a person cannot mimic simple gestures), and telephone syndrome (when a person is comatose but can somehow converse on the phone).
Gleaning insights from these rare and intriguing neurological disorders, Ramachandran reveals how the human brain has evolved unique functions that separate us from other primates. He proposes that around 150,000 years ago our brain started to change, allowing us to learn to perform new tasks. “All the same old parts were there,” he writes, “but they started working together in ways that were far more than the sum of their parts,” giving humans distinctive traits, such as language, empathy and morality.
Take mirror neurons, nerve cells that are activated when we perform an action or when we observe someone else performing an action. These neurons appear to help animals and humans imitate the behaviors they observe. Ramachandran theorizes that this sophisticated system of mirror neurons not only evolved to create awareness of others but also brought about self-awareness in humans. He fittingly dubbed these neurons “empathy neurons.” Based on this theory, he suggests that Cotard syndrome may result from damage to mirror neuron circuits, causing a person to lose that self-awareness.
Such bold leaps may make some scientists uneasy, but they are also what make Ramachandran so provocative and his book such an entertaining read.
See what we're tweeting about
8 Comments
Add CommentProfessor Ramachandran has been a real illuminary in neuroscience... accepting, like most Naturalists, that the physical brain wholly supports our consciousness... and thus, "ourselves".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of us who follow the developments in this intriguing field are aware of these disorders which shed light on neuro-anatomical brain function... except for Cotard Syndrome. As close to a "dead man walking" as you'll find in reality (sorry, no ghosts in this Universe).
Anyway, as neuroscience forges ahead, exposing the last frontier of our amazing physiology... religious soul-based musings and adolescent notions of unfettered free-will retreat into the Dark crevices from whence they came. That's a good thing... and liberating. We are surely an embedded part of Nature, and not apart from it.
Cheers!
Well said, Spin-oza. I appreciate your nod to one of my favorite Monist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHappy Holidays to all.
I vaguely remember a psych professor talking about Cotard Syndrome (but not by that name) as a simple manifestation of existential disassociation. If a man's life is crap, he may come to be able to smell nothing else. I didn't buy that explanation then, and I like this one better; still, I read theory and not proof here. Very interesting and unusual instances cited here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcuse me, Famulla, what are you talking about?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow, such an interesting article about our brain， i didn't even know about such things, thank you so much for the information, i guess i still have to read a lot (:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi hope you both understand <a href="http://customwritingservices.org/coursework-writing.php">course work</a> is not the proper one over the thing as well
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Ramachandran continues to improve as a writer and to educate, entertain and inspire, as a story teller.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile his argument - that humans are categoricaly or qualitatively different from other species because of our neurology - is unconvincing, the book dertails numerous instances of self, personhood, personality and awareness are seen in action from a neurological and anatomical perspective. Dr. Ramachandran shows what the brain is doing when it is being conscious, or what it means to be us.
For the record I'd disagree with his assertion that other animal species do not posess "self awareness". Everything else in this book is nothing less than science at it's best.
I totally agree that, at some stage in their recent evolution, humans changed how they used the brain. However, there seems to be some confusion of cause and effect here. It is unlikely that the change led to empathy, morality and language. It is more likely that the vulnerability of humans, particularly in Africa where they were surrounded by many of the most dangerous predators on the planet, meant that only groups of humans who coordinated their activities were able to survive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is usually described as selection of favourable behaviours, but the true mechanism is deselection of behaviours that do not ensure survival.
For millions of years human ancestors evolved without speech, but the need to coordinate their activities required some form of communication to convey intention and planning. That need led to speech.
The physical changes enabling speech evolved a bit over 200,000ya and the first signs of differentiation of self in the form of body paint, ornaments etc have been dated around 170,000ya. Speech led to consciousness.
Before speech, scenes and behaviours were recorded as visual images that associated particular situations with an action - a response. Speech required humans to attach words to individual objects in those images, breaking them out of context, and names to people, individuating themselves and others.
But this did not lead directly to a major change in lifestyle. They continued to live as hunter gatherers, though better stone tools and behaviours produced bigger populations and migrations out of Africa. The dramatic change in lifestyle and the use of the brain came when the sudden dip into the Younger Dryas mini Ice Age 11,000ya forced a few humans in one of the migration corridors in the Fertile Crescent to herd animals they previously hunted and cultivate crops they previously gathered.
The lack of innovation prior to that critical change is evidence that the brain did not evolve to think. It evolved to learn and repeat past practices, the opposite of innovation. That is why the brain has mirror neurons.
In summary, human ancestors could only survive by coordinating activities, creating pressure for communication, ultimately speech. Speech did not change the brain, just how humans connected objects in their brains.
In the modern world there are cultural differences that affect how individuals connect objects, themselves and others. Westerners individualise. Asian societies relate people more closely to their social context.
More detail at www.ideasintuitionandthinking.com/blog