Neurologically, OBEs are a form of bodily illusion arising from a temporary dissociation of visual and proprioceptive representations—normally these are coordinated, so that one views the world, inclu...
Natural beauty, for Darwin, was not just aesthetic; it always reflected function and adaptation at work. Orchids were not just ornamental, to be displayed in a garden or a bouquet; they were wonderful...
Many patients may confess that they feel strange or confused during a migraine aura, that they are clumsy in their movements, or that they would not drive at such a time. In short, they may be aware o...
Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. —Kierkegaard
Jimmie pode redimir-se ou reencontrar-se, mesmo que seja apenas por breves instantes, através de uma relação emocional, porque ele sabe que está perdido.
It was backbreaking, round-the-clock work, and it made us realize how hard the nurses and aides and orderlies worked in their normal routines, but we managed to prevent skin breakdown or any other pro...
Increasingly now, week by week, the normal, unconscious feedback of proprioception was being replaced by an equally unconscious feedback by vision, by visual automatism and reflexes increasingly integ...
In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.
In 1968, I read Luria’s Mind of a Mnemonist.
I have found it oddly difficult to get a clear answer—as it may be difficult, sometimes, to get a dreamer to tell you how he dreams. He is given to understand something, in the course of his dream, bu...
I had been to Amsterdam a couple of times with Eric; we loved the museums and the Concertgebouw (it was here that I first heard Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, in Dutch). We loved the canals lined wi...
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work, and my friends.
I did much of my writing in a little alcove by the bar, where I could be alone, private, invisible, yet warmed and stimulated by the vivid life at the bar.
I am now face to face with dying, but I am not finished with living.
Humans are storytelling creatures preeminently. We organize the world as a set of tales. How, then, can a person make any sense of his confusing environment if he cannot comprehend stories or surmise...
He followed this with a letter in which he spoke of the central resonances of a peripheral injury. He went on, You are discovering an entirely new field. . . . Please publish your observations. It may...
Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.
Diseases have a character of their own, but they also partake of our character; we have a character of our own, but we also partake of the world’s character: character is monadic or microcosmic, world...
Day by day, week by week, the dreams, the visions, came oftener, grew deeper. They were not occasional now, but occupied most of the day. We would see her rapt, as if in a trance, her eyes sometimes c...
Compact and clearly defined at its center, migraine diffuses outwards until it merges with an immense surrounding field of allied phenomena. The only boundaries which exist are those which we are forc...