Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandranis a neuroscientist known primarily for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Graduate Program in Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionScientist
CountryIndia
romantic-love games mistress
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.
views fire brain
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.
branches matter becoming
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.
responsibility medicine suffering
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.
dividing era interests somebody span though victorian
My interests span biology, though sometimes I feel like an anachronism, somebody from the Victorian era when there weren't so many boundaries dividing the sciences.
although art distort la people precisely randomly
You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.
art artistic denying enormous follow obviously otherwise played plays role styles tremendous universal
When I speak of artistic universals, I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you wouldn't have different artistic styles - but it doesn't follow that art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary, either, or that there are no universal laws.
became good great isolated private quite scientists socially sort sports
I was socially isolated as a kid. I had friends, but I wasn't very good at sports and that sort of thing so I became quite comfortable being by myself, exploring. The world was my private playground, and in it, I was supreme. Darwin, Faraday, Huxley and other great scientists were my companions.
current deeper generation life mythology nuances
My mother was religious; she was knowledgeable about mythology and scriptures; she could tell the metaphysical nuances and make the story come to life with their deeper significance. The current generation is missing out on this.
hype
The fact that hype exists doesn't prove that something is not important.
fine human lack nature touch tremendous work
You need to have tremendous confidence in your work, even a touch of arrogance, chutzpah. Many very fine researchers lack intellectual daring. It's human nature to want to be cozy, secure. But that can be a cul de sac.
celebrated great
Ask, 'How are we different from the great apes?' We have culture, we have civilisation, and we have language to be celebrated as part of being human.
knows metaphors
Everyone knows that metaphors are important, yet we have no idea why.
wired
It may well be our brains are wired up to be slightly more optimistic than they should be.