Romantic Science and the Experience of Self: Transatlantic Crosscurrents from William James to Oliver Sacks
The mental_floss Blogs (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
Neurologist Oliver Sacks prefers Bach to Beethoven — I’m just the opposite. But enough about me, let’s talk Sacks. Dr. Sacks volunteered to have his brain scanned while listening to each composer’s music. What’s interesting is that listening to Bach has a visible effect on his brain, which isn’t present when listening [...]
Biomedicine on Display (Free subscription) | 12/05/2009
Seed is running a series of monthly portraits of workbenches of interesting people (like Oliver Sacks, a renowned bat expert, an industrial designer, etc.) The latest portrait, published in yesterday’s online issue, is the lab bench of Martin Chalfie, one of the three who won a medical Nobel last year for the discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP). The [...]
Neuroskeptic (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
An intriguing and tragic story of brain damage is reported in the latest issue of Neurocase : Klüver-Bucy syndrome, hypersexuality, and the law . The authors are Devinsky, Sacks, and Devinsky - Sacks being neurologist and author Dr. Oliver Sacks . Their anonymous patient, a 51 year old married American man, is currently serving a jail sentence for downloading child...
bringing up charlie (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Did you hear that in the news ? That ready-made pasta sauces generally contain a huge amount of salt? That some of St Jamie Oliver's are among the worst? That leading brands contain - on average - 25% more salt than supermarket substitutes? And that - in the worst cases - sauces are as salty as the same amount of seawater? This is very bad news chez Bringing up Charlie . We eat a lot of pasta....
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/15/2009
... addition to the more predictable essays from the likes of Seamus Heaney (on Thomas Flanagan) and Oliver Sacks (on Francis Crick). Some may deplore the American bias, or the omissions, such as no essay by Kingsley Amis on Philip Larkin. Set against this is the excellence of much of the writing, often with a humorous and wry tone that belies the sadness of the lives described. guardian.co.uk...
Think Tonk (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
If it works for Wittgenstein and Oliver Sacks , why not? I have this friend who eats cheerios every morning for breakfast, alternates tuna/pbj for every lunch, and finishes that off with veggie tacos every night for dinner. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Eat some oranges to stave of scurvy, sure, but I can't think of a reason for this guy not to stick with this and use the brain...
Violinist.com (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
... musician has enlarged music centers in their brain. Cat scans and research have proven that (see Oliver Sacks). Was it his amazing output of music? Bach came from a musical family. His composition efforts were encouraged from an early age. Later on, it was his job to write a certain number of new pieces each week. Maybe it's the way his music sounds? There is something universally...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
... plays a similar game, suggesting García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Ian McEwan's Saturday as likely nominees from the past. But the possibility exists, of course, to reach back much further in the literary record than this. Illness, certainly, was present at the birth of western literature: just think...
Best of 3 (Free subscription) | 11/01/2009
... making it ideal for use in things like filaments in electric lightbulbs. I've recently re-read Oliver Sack's memoir of his chemical-mad childhood, Uncle Tungsten , so I was feeling ready to like the H & F-J font as soon as I saw the name. Then this morning I happened across New Zealand typographer Kris Sowersby's Karbon - which made me wonder if anyone has laid out typefaces into...
Entertainment Weekly (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
... happen, or what we’re going to see, or what Michael is going to say to Fredo, Neurologist-author Oliver Sacks could write a great article about what’s going on at a molecular level as we anticipate a stunning scene or even a beloved dumb one.This is not a Deep Critic Thought, just a statement and an invitation: I can’t get enough of some movies. (And once in a lifetime is enough for...
The Classical Beat (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
... Stoppard one-acter "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor" and Michael Nyman's opera based on Oliver Sacks's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." At the same time, the InSeries is opening "Zarzuela on the Avenue," two short zarzuelas united in an updated production. Those who wish to avoid costumes altogether can attend the recital of the Juilliard-trained...
BBC SPORT - Olympics 2008 blog (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
... and has never once cycled round a velodrome. Steve Peters is the British team's psychiatrist, the Oliver Sacks of cycling. He has variously been described as a "genius" (Dave Brailsford) and "the reason I am riding today" ( Vicky Pendleton ). "Without Steve I don't think I could have brought home the triple golds from Beijing," Hoy has said. "I do...
birdbrain (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
... a virus in 1985 that attacked his brain, causing sever retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Oliver Sacks wrote a beautiful essay in The New Yorker in 2007 about Clive Wearing: In March of 1985, Clive Wearing, an eminent English musician and musicologist in his mid-forties, was struck by a brain infection—a herpes encephalitis—affecting especially the parts of his...
** Science On Tap... ** (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
Mvar gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); ); PBS's "Nova" and neurologist/writer Oliver Sacks explore music and the human brain here: Mvar gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://
Scientific American (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
FeaturesIllusionsBOOKSPhotography by Christopher Payne. Essay by Oliver Sacks. MIT PressInsane asylum. For many people the phrase conjures up images of desperate patients trapped in concrete fortresses. Although abuse no doubt has occurred in some mental hospitals, there is another, much less frequently explored side to the story.In his surprisingly arresting photoessay book, Asylum,...
