Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Hallucinations


Hallucinations Paperback

Author: Visit Amazon's Oliver Sacks Page - ISBN: 0307947432 - Language: English - Format: PDF, EPUB

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Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: A familiar song on mental repeat, a shadowy movement in an empty house--many of us experience minor visual and auditory hallucinations and think nothing of it. Neurologist and professor Oliver Sacks concerns himself with those for whom such breaks with reality are acute and life altering. Dr. Sacks’ latest book--one of the most compelling in his fascinating oeuvre--centers on Charles Bonnet syndrome, a condition characterized by intricate visual hallucinations. Weaving together case studies with anecdotes from his own past and accessible medical explanations, Dr. Sacks introduces us to Sharon, whose vision is invaded by Kermit the Frog; Gertie, whose phantasmal gentleman caller visits each evening, bearing gifts; and a host of other patients whose experiences elicit both sympathy and self-reflection. (The good doctor also shares his own experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, to comic and insightful effect.) Hallucinations is Oliver Sacks at his best: as learned, introspective, and approachable as we could possibly imagine. --Mia Lipman

The Neurological and the Divine: An Interview with Oliver Sacks

The following is an excerpt from a Q&A with Dr. Sacks published on Omnivoracious, the Amazon Books blog. Click here to read the full interview.

Mia Lipman: In Hallucinations, you mention that your childhood migraines are one of the reasons you became a neurologist. How did they help shape your path?

Dr. Sacks: My experiences go back to my first memories of when I was three or four, suddenly seeing a brilliant zigzag which seemed to be vibrating, then enlarged and covered everything to one side. This has happened innumerable times since, but that first time was very terrifying…I know I was in the garden, and part of the garden wall seemed to disappear, and I asked my mother about it. She too had classical migraines, so she explained what it was about and said that it was benign and it would only last a few minutes, and I'd be none the worse. So though I'm not in love with the attacks, it's nice to know that one can live with this quite well.

So that early experience made you curious about why this was happening to you?

Indeed, and there were other experiences. Sometimes it was just color, perhaps in one half of the visual field, or things would be frozen and I couldn't see any movement. So I think this gave me a very early feeling that it's only the privilege of a normal brain which allows us to see the way we do—and that what seems to be a simple vision in fact must have dozens of different components, and any one of these can go down. So it was a learning experience for me as well.

Speaking of learning experiences, you talk in the book about a period in your 30s when you did a lot of hallucinogenic drugs—

Ah, I thought that would come up. [Laughing.]

Of course, it's the best part! I especially liked your description of the results as "a mix of the neurological and the divine." What did this self-experimentation teach you about your field, as well as personally?

I can't conceal that my motives were sort of mixed, but these were learning experiences as well as recreational ones, and occasionally terrifying ones. The gain, I think, [is that] it's a way of revealing various capacities and incapacities in the brain, including, perhaps, mystical ones…I quote William James, who, after taking nitrous oxide, said that it showed him there were many forms of consciousness other than rational consciousness, and that these seem to be uncovered one by one. And that's quite an experience. I do not recommend it to anybody, and I hope my writing about these things is not seen as a recommendation. I think I'm very lucky to have survived them, which several of my friends and contemporaries didn't.

> Continue reading "The Neurological and the Divine: An Interview with Oliver Sacks"

--This text refers to the






Hardcover
edition.

From Bookforum

Many of the observations in Sacks's book are couched so modestly and gently that they seem not reductive but transcendent, the dependence of belief on biology representing one more example of the remarkable grace to be found in the operations of the human mind. —Jenny Davidson
--This text refers to the






Hardcover
edition.
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Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks 9780307947437 Paperback To many people hallucinations imply madness but in fact they are a common part of the human experience These sensory distortions range from the shimmering zigzags Hallucinations Oliver Sacks 9780307947437 Amazon com Hallucinations Oliver Sacks on Amazon com FREE shipping on qualifying offers To many people hallucinations imply madness but in Hallucinations Oliver Sacks M D Physician Author More about Hallucinations the new book from Oliver Sacks Have you ever seen something that wasn t really there Heard someone call your name in an empty house Hallucinations Paperback Target Find product information ratings and reviews for a Hallucinations Paperback Hallucinations Paperback Overstock com Shopping The Shop for Hallucinations Paperback Get free shipping on orders over 50 at Overstock com Your Online Books Store

DETAILS
  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; 1st edition (July 2, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0307947432
  • ISBN-13: 978-0307947437
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    • #52 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Internal Medicine > Neurology

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Hallucinations Oliver Sacks on Amazon com FREE shipping on qualifying offers To many people hallucinations imply madness but in fact they are a common part of Hallucinations book written by Oliver Sacks published by Random House LLC has been download 6 times which last download at 2014 04 25 15 25 20 Have you ever seen eBooks Download Free hallucinations Downloading books rapidshare megaupload hallucinations page 1 and hotfile and mediafire links or torrent in pdf or chm Hallucinations is a 2012 book written by neurologist Oliver Sacks In Hallucinations Sacks recounts stories of hallucinations and other mind altering episodes of Get a free sample or buy Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks on the iTunes Store You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone iPad or iPod touch About hallucinations Alzheimer 39 s Association Book Size 1 81 MB Pdf Pages 63 About hallucinations Understanding the difference between hallucinations and Listen to Hallucinations audiobook by Oliver Sacks Stream and download audiobooks to your computer tablet or mobile phone Bestsellers and latest releases try any Download Transcript In Oliver Sacks 39 book The Mind 39 s Eye the neurologist He expands on this footnote in his book Hallucinations where he writes Amazon it Hallucination Download MP3 Amazon it Il mio Amazon it Offerte Buoni Regalo Book Depository Libri con spedizione gratuita in tutto il mondo Immediately download the Hallucinations book summary chapter by chapter analysis book notes essays quotes character descriptions lesson plans and more

You're sitting in a darkened room, or perhaps lying in bed. Suddenly, you hear your name being spoken. Perhaps it's a familiar voice. You start, you may even get up- but more likely you just realize there's no one there. You must have imagined it.

Has this ever happened to you? It would be odd if it hadn't. Most people have had this experience, and experiences like it. If and when it happened to you, your first thought was probably "I must have imagined it." You might also have thought about telling someone else about it- but then thought better of it. Normal people don't have hallucinations, right? That's something that happens to crazy people.

But hallucinations are a near-universal phenomenon, and they're not limited only to those people suffering from mental disorders. In fact, the hallucinations of schizophrenics, which are usually auditory in nature, make up a very small subset of the range of hallucinations that people experience. There are a great many conditions, both internal and external, that can result in hallucinations in all modalities- sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. There are kinesthetic hallucinations that affect a person's perception of the position of their body, or pain, or the passage of time. For every perception, there are hallucinations.

Many, if not most, people don't report hallucination for fear of being labeled crazy. There's a very common, yet underreported condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, or CBS for short, that commonly afflicts older people who suffer from some visual impairment. The impairment can be peripheral in nature, like macular degeneration, or central, as in a stroke affecting visual cortex or thalamus; the important thing is that all or part of the visual field is damaged, or missing.

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