An Oliver Sacks-style tour of the neuroscience of schizophrenia,
autism, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, Cotard's syndrome and out of body
experiences in which people lose some critical sense of themselves
- with sometimes bizarre and often painful results - revealing the
absolute importance of our sense of self, however fragile and its
nurture.Understanding "the self" has long been thought to be
neuroscience's greatest challenge, a mystery perhaps that never can
be solved. We are who we are - but mystics, Buddhists and even
scientists have told us the self is an illusion. We know who we are
but then no matter how successful and healthy you are, sometimes we
wonder - who is that inside our heads? Who am I really? Are you
sure you know? With the explosion of progress in the scientific
investigation of conditions such as schizophrenia, autism,
Alzheimer's, ecstatic epilepsy and Cotard's syndrome, as well as
out of body experiences and Asperger's, we are learning about the
Self at a level of detail that Descartes ("I think therefore I am")
could never have imagined. Is the Self merely your ongoing
autobiography, your personal narrative, as Antonio Damasio has
suggested? Alzheimer's disease is illuminating the role of memory
in the construction of that narrative as Ananthaswamy shows. The
same part of your brain that remembers your life story is
constructing your future life story. Is the location of the Self in
our grey matter at hand? Those afflicted with Cotard's syndrome
think they are already dead - in a way, they believe that "I think
therefore I am not". But who - or what - is saying that?
Neuroscience has identified specific regions of the brain that,
when they misfire, can lead to the self can moving back and forth
between the body and a doppelganger or leaving the body entirely
and able to witness it's former body. But, then, where in the brain
is the self actually located? As Ananthaswamy elegantly reports,
neuroscientists themselves ultimately acknowledge that the self is
both everywhere and nowhere in the brain's anatomy. Here is a
magical mystery tour of one of the most ancient mysteries now
utterly transformed by cutting edge neuroscience told by a master
of science journalism.
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