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HallucinationsStock informationGeneral Fields
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DescriptionFrom the best-selling author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a provocative investigation into hallucinations-auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory-their many guises, their physiological sources, and their personal and cultural resonances. Hallucinations, for most people, imply madness. But there are many different types of non-psychotic hallucination caused by various illnesses or injuries, by intoxication-even, for many people, by falling sleep. From the elementary geometrical shapes that we see when we rub our eyes to the complex swirls and blind spots and zigzags of a visual migraine, hallucination takes many forms. At a higher level, hallucinations associated with the altered states of consciousness that may come with sensory deprivation or certain brain disorders can lead to religious epiphanies or conversions. Drawing on a wealth of clinical examples from his own patients as well as historical and literary descriptions, Oliver Sacks investigates the fundamental differences and similarities of these many sorts of hallucinations, what they say about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all. Reviews"Absorbing...Dr. Sacks provides what he calls a kind of 'natural history or anthology of hallucinations' drawn from his patients' experiences, his own observations and from literature on the subject...Sacks conjures these apparitions in language that has an easy, tactile magic. As he's done in so many of his earlier books, like "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and" An Anthropologist on Mars," he uses his medical knowledge to illuminate the complexities of the human brain and the mysteries of the human mind. At the same time, his compassion for his patients and his own philosophical outlook turn what might have been clinical case studies into humanely written short stories, animated as much by an intuitive appreciation of the human condition as by scientific understanding." -Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times " Author descriptionOLIVER SACKS is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center and the author of many books, including "Musicophilia, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, "and" Awakenings" (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film). |