Emelia Seybert
PSY 442
19 November, 2015
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Oliver Sacks I love Oliver Sacks and all of his interesting tales from his clinic. Previously I have read “Hallucinations” and “Awakenings” by him and I must say “Hallucinations” is one of my all time favorites. He has a way of taking subjects that one would find in a textbook and turning them into living breathing people with vivid and imaginative writing. His style and stories are engaging and I find myself accidentally learning more about the brain than I ever thought possible. This book adds greatly to our discussion as it takes different disorders we have been looking at through the course and gives them a face and a thorough and relatable description of …show more content…
A brain scan shows that his temporal lobes are in fact seizing, however, his hallucinations do not resemble those of an epileptic, who usually hallucinate about things, not doing things. Doctors believe that the damage to his frontal lobe somehow removed his repression of the traumatic memory. Donald did not display other symptoms of loss of frontal lobe integrity like aggression, impulsiveness and vulgarity. He simply unlocked the memory and relived it until it drove him mad. To this day, his condition is still a mystery, though he has been able to sustain a somewhat normal life able to work through his sudden …show more content…
He knows over 2000 operas by heart, most after seeing only once. He knows all of Bach's cantatas. He is an extremely skilled music director and coordinator (though he cannot sing to save his life). His father was an opera singer and shared the love of music with him since the day he was born, it was something they did together and bonded over. Martin was able to memorize the entire Grove, which is a musical encyclopedia. However, Martin was basically retarded in all other aspects. He had had meningitis as an infant that left him impulsive, slow, could not hold down a job in adulthood due to
PSY 442
19 November, 2015
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Oliver Sacks I love Oliver Sacks and all of his interesting tales from his clinic. Previously I have read “Hallucinations” and “Awakenings” by him and I must say “Hallucinations” is one of my all time favorites. He has a way of taking subjects that one would find in a textbook and turning them into living breathing people with vivid and imaginative writing. His style and stories are engaging and I find myself accidentally learning more about the brain than I ever thought possible. This book adds greatly to our discussion as it takes different disorders we have been looking at through the course and gives them a face and a thorough and relatable description of …show more content…
A brain scan shows that his temporal lobes are in fact seizing, however, his hallucinations do not resemble those of an epileptic, who usually hallucinate about things, not doing things. Doctors believe that the damage to his frontal lobe somehow removed his repression of the traumatic memory. Donald did not display other symptoms of loss of frontal lobe integrity like aggression, impulsiveness and vulgarity. He simply unlocked the memory and relived it until it drove him mad. To this day, his condition is still a mystery, though he has been able to sustain a somewhat normal life able to work through his sudden …show more content…
He knows over 2000 operas by heart, most after seeing only once. He knows all of Bach's cantatas. He is an extremely skilled music director and coordinator (though he cannot sing to save his life). His father was an opera singer and shared the love of music with him since the day he was born, it was something they did together and bonded over. Martin was able to memorize the entire Grove, which is a musical encyclopedia. However, Martin was basically retarded in all other aspects. He had had meningitis as an infant that left him impulsive, slow, could not hold down a job in adulthood due to