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Here is a neuron that fires when I reach and grab something, but it also fires when I watch Joe reaching and grabbing something. ... It's as though this neuron is adopting the other person's point of view.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
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Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: August 10
Academic
Neurologist
Pedagogue
Psychologist
Scientist
Writer
Rykove
V. S. Ramachandran
V S Ramachandran
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More quotes by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
People think of art and science as being fundamentally opposed to each other, because art is about celebrating individual human creativity, and science is about discovering general principles, not about individual people. But in fact, the two have a lot in common, and the creative spirit is similar in both.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
What the artist tries to do (either consciously or unconsciously) is to not only capture the essence of something but also to amplify it in order to more powerfully activate the same neural mechanisms that would be activated by the original object.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
People often ask how I got interested in the brain my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
What do we mean by knowledge or understanding? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like understand, think, and indeed the word meaning itself.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Even today no computer can understand language as well as a three-year-old or see as well as a mouse.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Science is like a love affair with nature an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but thats part of the game.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Your conscious life is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
The boundary between neurology and psychiatry is becoming increasingly blurred, and its only a matter of time before psychiatry becomes just another branch of neurology.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Without ducking responsibility, what's wrong with medicine today is that it is predicated on providing treatment, not on reducing suffering. Not on solving problems.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Our ability to perceive the world around us seems so effortless that we tend to take it for granted.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
The visual system of the brain has the organization, computational profile, and architecture it has in order to facilitate the organism's thriving at the four Fs: feeding fleeing, fighting, and reproduction.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
One of the first things we teach medical students is to listen to the patient by taking a careful medical history. Ninety percent of the time, you can arrive at an uncannily accurate diagnosis by paying close attention, using physical examination and sophisticated lab test to confirm your hunch (and to increase the bill to the insurance company).
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it's really a very odd predicament to be in, if you think about it.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran