A Whole Lot of It Is In Your Head

Hey Toads!

Manicddaily, Karin Gustafson, Outlawyer, here writing about one of the writers I have most admired in my life. This is Dr. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and best-selling science writer and memoirist, who died in New York City this past August.  

Dr, Sacks inspired great affection in his readers. His writing, both about his personal experiences, his patients’ experiences, and the experience acquired by science (as in, scientific research and records) showed him to be a tremendously thoughtful and empathetic person, with an immense sense of wonder (and humor.) 

Although Sacks wrote beautiful memoirs, many books explore neurological conditions. These explorations frequently involve particular case studies of Sacks' own patients, as well as a review of historical records (medical records but also, at times, histories of famous persons thought to possibly suffer from certain neurological conditions--such as Edgar Allen Poe, Dostoyevsky and Joan of Arc.)  

Not the voices again! 

What is especially wonderful about Sacks' writing is--well, his compassion. But, what is also wonderful is that he never sentimentalizes either the neurological issue or the compensatory tools that the afflicted person develops to live with it.  (These can sometimes turn the affliction into a strength.)

Most of the stories of people's forms of compensation are quite serious.  For example, the autistic Temple Grandin's invention of a "hugging machine," which gave her the firm and calming sensation of a hug, without the fear that her autism sometimes associated with human contact.  (Grandin's story is especially interesting because of the way her autism has given her an affinity with animals, helping her develop more humane systems for the treatment of livestock.)  

A rather funny compensation story involved a man who had a form of narcolepsy, which manifested itself as cataplexy (a temporary loss of muscle use).  The man found that uncontrollable laughter would bring on an attack (causing him to collapse) so that whenever he met up with Robin Williams, a friend, he would immediately just lie down on the floor. 

Sacks is perhaps most widely known for his best selling book, The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (the title case about a man with visual agnosia --an inability to recognize objects), and a movie based upon his book, Awakenings, about his work with a group of patients suffering from a form of encephalitus. (Robin Williams plays Sacks in the movie.) 

Looks like a deep-sea brain.

One my favorite books of Dr. Sacks, is A Leg To Stand On, which describes his personal experience of being gored by a bull on a solo hike on a mountain in Norway, severing the tendons and nerves in one leg.  After the accident, he crawled down the mountain on his backside (with the help of internal music), and then endured a long recovery, trying to regain not just the physical use of the leg, but the feeling that the damaged leg was still his.  

This brings up one of the most interesting aspects of many of the cases--how much sensation is based in the brain (and not in the applicable sensory organ--the eyes, the ears, the finger tips).  In Sacks‘ case, he was shocked that, for some time following his injury, his leg no longer felt like a part of his body; rather, it was like an intruder in his bed--dead flesh.

Brain in Bed (With Pearl)

Sacks also has written about the opposite condition, phantom limb syndrome--in which the brain still senses the missing limb, feeling pain in a foot that was long ago severed.

Many striking example of the brain’s role in sensation involve sight.  One case study (in An Anthropologist on Mars), involves a man, blind most of his life, recovering the use of his eyes. While at first there is joy on recovery, sight turns out to painfully laborious because the man's brain has not developed the visual cortex to a level that it can interpret vision.  (The poor man actually dies within a couple of years of the eye surgeries, in part because of this stress of trying to incorporate sight into his life.) 

Of course, there are the opposite stories where people lose vision, and their visual cortex supplies them with various compensations, often in the form of visual hallucinations. (Examples include people who, suffering strokes, can only see one side of a room, but whose brain simply makes up the other half.) 

Anyway, enough!  I urge you to read virtually any book or article by Oliver Sacks.  Here is a link to his personal website, and to certain articles about him. 

In the meantime, WHAT IS THE PROMPT?

I offer a plethora of choices!  One is to write about a disconnect between the body and brain, or the senses and the brain (or some other neurological glitch). This could involve some kind of phantom experience, sensation or body part, or a visual, auditory or olfactory, hallucination or flash back.   (NOTE THAT YOUR USE OF THIS IDEA COULD  BE COMPLETELY METAPHORIC!)   

Another possibility is to write about a significant experience of music in your brain.  (I am thinking here about Sacks getting himself down the Norwegian mountain by singing to himself, but you should feel free to write about any kind of interior music, including an "ear worm" --a song that gets stuck in your head.)

Finally, you could write a poem based upon some version of one of Dr. Sacks‘ titles.  (Using a title of a book for a prompt is Kerry’s wonderful idea, but she has authorized me to co-opt it.)  The three titles of Sacks that came to mind for me are The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, and The Island of the Color-Blind (or pick another). For this alternative,  you could write a poem on the idea of The _______ who mistook his/her _______ for a ___________. 

or, An Anthropologist on __________; or A ____________ on Mars;

or The Island of the ________    , or The _________  of the Colorblind. 


So, sorry for the length of the prompt.  Please have fun with it. And please visit your cohorts! (All the photos and pics here--such as they are-- were made by me, by the way;  all rights reserved.) 

Thanks.