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Oct 3, 2010

The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks


A person can lose a limb and compensate with prosthetics but what if what you lose – or gain comes from your brain?  Sacks gives us a neurological casebook of his patients and one case that’s very personal – a melanoma in his right eye.

We have the female concert pianist who can’t recognize objects any more but with her eyes closed can reproduce past performances.  The vital woman whom a stroke rendered speechless and the experience while frustrating has enhanced her life.  The writer who overnight lost the ability to read, yet he can still write.  And Stereo Sue, she’s seen in mono all her life and suddenly the whole world is like a magic eye picture. Every one of these patients is inspiring. They don’t have physical scars, but they’ve lost mental processes that we take for granted. (Published end of October)

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