Ramachandran begins his book with snippets of peculiar medical cases. The stories are fascinating because the brain is fragile, yet strong; damage to a particular part of the brain can lead to the expression of an odd behavior, yet the person can remain rational. Ramachandran (1998) expresses that these type of cases usually do not get much attention from doctors (i.e., neurologists and psychiatrists) and there has not been much investigation about the causes of their behaviors (p. 2). However, he emphasizes that these unique cases help us understand the various mysteries of the brain (Ramachandran, 1998, p. 12). Ramachandran makes it seem that we are moving forward on performing experiments on people with odd behaviors and on finding out more about the brain, but is this the case today? In my point of view, research has focused on illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and not on isolated cases. Furthermore, I am wondering about how do researchers recruit people with unique cases? The book was written in 1998 and I feel like recruitment techniques have had to change in the past 19 years.
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One particular case caught my attention: the lady with the deadly left hand (Ramachandran, 1998, pp. 12-13). It was creepy to read about her story, but I was wondering how common are strokes in the corpus callosum? Additionally, does the malignant left hand do anything else besides strangle people (e.g., reach for random objects)? Another case that caught my attention was that of Bill Marshall, who had problems with arithmetic or dyscalculia (Ramchandran, 1998, pp. 17-19). Bill was fine in other aspects, like in speech and understanding jokes. I had three questions concerning dyscalculia: what other problems do people with dyscalculia have, is dyscalculia only caused by strokes, and are there any
One particular case caught my attention: the lady with the deadly left hand (Ramachandran, 1998, pp. 12-13). It was creepy to read about her story, but I was wondering how common are strokes in the corpus callosum? Additionally, does the malignant left hand do anything else besides strangle people (e.g., reach for random objects)? Another case that caught my attention was that of Bill Marshall, who had problems with arithmetic or dyscalculia (Ramchandran, 1998, pp. 17-19). Bill was fine in other aspects, like in speech and understanding jokes. I had three questions concerning dyscalculia: what other problems do people with dyscalculia have, is dyscalculia only caused by strokes, and are there any