Oliver Sacks Book Report
Oliver Sacks
From the outside, we all look roughly the same, but if you delve into the world of our minds some people stand out as subtly different. Oliver Sacks was a Neurologist and Author. He wrote several books including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Migraine and An Anthropologist on Mars. My favourite cases are some of the weirdest ones. For example, who would… or COULD mistake their wife for a hat.
Dr P was a professor of music at a university. He frequently makes silly mistakes like thinking the white board duster is a pen and so on. He often can’t tell the difference between his students and a pole until they speak/ don’t speak to him. Oliver Sacks went to see him to try and sort out his problem. He found that Dr P could see perfectly well, but the parts of his brain that processed the images was not working. Therefore, he could see perfectly well but couldn’t understand what he saw. One of the passages in the book reads; “What is this? I asked, holding up a glove.
“May I examine it? He asked, and, taking it from me, he proceeded to examine it as he had examined the geometrical shapes. “A continuous …show more content…
It took him about half an hour until he accidently got in on and exclaimed, “By god, it’s a glove!” If this was me, I don’t know how I would cope. I think that I would get confused and lost all the time. Dr P is a very accomplished musician and has a huge repertoire of songs confined to memory. He operates in the world by singing songs. For example, the breakfast song means that the bread is here, the fork is there, and the butter is there. If he is interrupted he gets confused and can’t start again. He effectively gets lost in his own house. I think that cases like these are profoundly interesting but kind of sad at the same time. By employing the song technique, Dr P could continue the semblance of a normal life far beyond a normal person
From the outside, we all look roughly the same, but if you delve into the world of our minds some people stand out as subtly different. Oliver Sacks was a Neurologist and Author. He wrote several books including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Migraine and An Anthropologist on Mars. My favourite cases are some of the weirdest ones. For example, who would… or COULD mistake their wife for a hat.
Dr P was a professor of music at a university. He frequently makes silly mistakes like thinking the white board duster is a pen and so on. He often can’t tell the difference between his students and a pole until they speak/ don’t speak to him. Oliver Sacks went to see him to try and sort out his problem. He found that Dr P could see perfectly well, but the parts of his brain that processed the images was not working. Therefore, he could see perfectly well but couldn’t understand what he saw. One of the passages in the book reads; “What is this? I asked, holding up a glove.
“May I examine it? He asked, and, taking it from me, he proceeded to examine it as he had examined the geometrical shapes. “A continuous …show more content…
It took him about half an hour until he accidently got in on and exclaimed, “By god, it’s a glove!” If this was me, I don’t know how I would cope. I think that I would get confused and lost all the time. Dr P is a very accomplished musician and has a huge repertoire of songs confined to memory. He operates in the world by singing songs. For example, the breakfast song means that the bread is here, the fork is there, and the butter is there. If he is interrupted he gets confused and can’t start again. He effectively gets lost in his own house. I think that cases like these are profoundly interesting but kind of sad at the same time. By employing the song technique, Dr P could continue the semblance of a normal life far beyond a normal person