The Tell-Tale Brain

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The Tell-Tale Brain: Unlocking the Mystery of Human Nature

VS Ramachandran

VS Rama Chandran, a neuroscientist, attempts to unravel the mystery of human mind in this book. His methods of investigation are ‘low-tech’, as he emphasises in the preface. He is enamoured of Sherlock Holmes and follows his mystery-solving techniques in his clinical investigations. He is a clinician and sees many patients suffering from various disabilities, having lesions in different brain regions. From study of such patients he surmises what function a specific area of brain performs. Some of these patients also have other coexistent disabilities which are discovered coincidentally during clinical examination. These provide clue to the varied roles a single area of brain plays in human beings. A consistent thread runs through all the chapters, i.e. Ramachandran’s attempt to explain various facts of human behaviour and psyche in light of evolution.

Ramachandran begins the book with his experiments with patients suffering from Phantom Limbs (sensory perception in a limb that an amputee has lost) and introduces some ingenious experiments he devised to study and treat such patients. In a chapter he attempts to describe the essential difference between seeing and observing. Whole book is riddled with hair-raising, unbelievably strange case-studies. But his explanations for these phenomena seem plausible, though some read more like speculation. He devotes a complete chapter to synaesthesia, a disorder where patients perceive a different sensory mode than the sense being stimulated: like coloured numbers, diverse and vivid emotions in musical notes etc. Through these, Ramachandran attempts to explain evolution of human capability for metaphor formation. He explains Mirror Neurons, which give us the unique capability for empathy. His various experiences with autistic patients are recounted in a chapter and he has some new explanations to offer for this baffling disorder. He talks on length about the most human of our characteristic, the Speech, and speculates how syntax, lexicon and semantics; the essential features of speech may have evolved. In two big chapters he largely and freely speculates about human capability to appreciate art and aesthetics. I found these chapters a little astray in this book, as if Ramachandran, fond of his theories on these subjects wanted to accommodate them in a book of his, however unrelated to the theme of the book these may be. In the last chapter he puts forth his view -citing many case-studies- on the mechanism of self-awareness. This is the quintessential quality of human brain, which not only allows it to be aware of the universe but to wonder on the origin of self-awareness itself. This is a most intriguing topic and most of the questions are far from settled. Ramachandran does offer some original views here too.

            Book is highly readable. Innumerable interesting examples of baffling brain disorders keep the interest of the reader alive. His language is conversational and its import lucid. But the book largely tells us about the functions of various areas of brain and how these might have evolved in humans. Why we perceive red rose as red, a bruise on the knee as painful and the sound of approaching footsteps of our beloved as thrilling, when ultimately it is the similar neurons in different areas of brain which respond to these varied stimuli with a similar chemical activation (or deactivation), is a query, I find most bewildering and I do not find any clue to its solution in this book. I recommend this book for all who are interested in the evolution of our species and its unique and unfathomably deep mysterious nature.