The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks

This book by the world class Oliver Sacks is essentially a cast of rather conspicuous patients with varying disorders of the mind.Written by a neurologist with a huge respect for his patients it is not the stuff of boring textbook aetiology. The man who provides the graphic title of the book is the first to have his strange tale told.Dr P has visual agnosia and cannot recognise everyday objects(or his wife!)yet is still capable of carrying out his duties as a musician of distinction.Sad yet quite humorously he mistakes shoes for feet and heads for hats and through this tale starts a whole learning journey of the delicate balances of the human mind.By ...

Aimed at people who have an interest in the workings of the human brain as an instrument of perception and consciousness, but don't have the inclination to delve through stuffy medical texts, this book is a compilation of some of Sacks' most intriguing cases. We are shown patients who have suffered brain damage causing disturbances in the web of connections that the brain uses to build up a mental picture of the world. Some of them lose their ability to distinguish faces or objects (such as the man of the title). Some have lost their ability to interpret tone of voice, or music. Most of them realise there is something amiss, but he most ...