Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, FRCPwas a British neurologist, naturalist and author who spent his professional life in the United States. He believed that the brain is the "most incredible thing in the universe" and therefore important to study. He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about his patients' disorders, with some of his books adapted for stage and film...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth9 July 1933
children unique two
My impression is that a sense of rhythm, which has no analog in language, is unique and that its correlation with movement is unique to human beings. Why else would children start to dance when they're two or three? Chimpanzees don't dance.
and-love purpose feels
he wanted to do, to be, to feel- and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose- in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'.
secret five-senses chakra
there are other senses - secret senses, sixth senses, if you will - equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded.
writing quality goes-on
I suspect that music has qualities both of speech and writing - partly built in, partly individually constructed - and this goes on all through one's life.
imagination perception brain
With any hallucinations, if you can do functional brain imagery while theyre going on, you will find that the parts of the brain usually involved in seeing or hearing - in perception - have become super active by themselves. And this is an autonomous activity; this does not happen with imagination.
health people feelings
For 'wellness', naturally, is no cause for complaint - people relish it, they enjoy it, they are at the furthest pole from complaint. People complain of feeling ill - not well ... Thus, though a patient will scarcely complain of being 'very well', they may become suspicious if they feel 'too well'.
technology thinking brain
Although I think it is wonderful to have the whole world of music available in something that small and to have it conveyed with such fidelity almost straight into the brain, I think the technology is also a danger.
philosophy philosophical science
Sign language is the equal of speech, lending itself equally to the rigorous and the poetic, to philosophical analysis or to making love.
drama simple movement
The power of music, narrative and drama is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance. ... We see how the retarded, unable to perform fairly simple tasks involving perhaps four or five movements or procedures in sequence, can do these perfectly if they work to music.
memories frozen jars
We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.
voice brain may
It seems that the brain always has to be active, and if the auditory parts of the brain are not getting sufficient input, then they may start to create hallucinatory sounds on their own. Although it is curious that they do not usually create noises or voices; they create music.
doctors stupidity patient
There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.
reflection museums drs
Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape
blessing grace stealing
The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace--