Biology 202 Book Commentary

          An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks serves to explain the lives of several individuals who have been living with various defects and diseases.  These individuals include Mr. I, an artist who had gone completely colorblind, Greg F., who had no memories of any events after the 1970s, Dr. Carl Bennet, a surgeon with Tourette’s syndrome, Virgil, a man who gained the ability to see after being blind, Franco, a painter who has the ability to create accurate paintings of his hometown that he hasn’t visited in many years, Stephen, a talented artist with autism, and Temple Grandin, an autistic professor at Colorado State University. 

 Kathryn Gould

Professor Grobstein

Neurobiology

14 May 2010

Tackling Trauma

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Eric Kandel shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine in 2000 “for [his] discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system” (The Nobel Prize). Nobel laureates are asked to write a short piece describing the research for which they were awarded the prize. What Kandel wrote instead was a nearly 500-page history of neuroscience and his own participation in it, as well a detailed description of his research on the cellular and molecular basis of memory. He ties his own life experiences, especially the necessity of leaving Vienna as a child in the face of the Nazi takeover, into his research, giving the book a more human element that makes it readable by the general public. Memory is Kandel’s life work.

The Butterflies of Our Mind

I was first introduced to “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” when I was searching information about consciousness disorders. The book was written by Jean-Dominique Bauby, a patient with locked-in syndrome. Then the chief editor of French Elle, Bauby suffered the condition caused by a massive stroke. Only able to turn his head and blink his left eye, he was “imprisoned inside his own body” (4). To me, it sounds like the worst nightmare one can possibly experience – even worse than a complete loss of consciousness. I cannot imagine how claustrophobic it would feel, unable to give response to the outer world when I could still feel everything around me.

           Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm begins his tale in the medieval times where everyone knew their role in life, as a peasant or lord, and where people lacked individual freedom. Then an individual finds that they are a separate entity, separate from nature, and they began to discover the world1. With this emerged individual comes freedom, but with freedom comes a feeling of aloneness and a lack of purpose. The individual goes on a quest to fill the void of being alone. The path to maintaining freedom while filling in feelings of doubt and aloneness can lead to negative freedom and positive freedom.

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            Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Blink,” about the usefulness and importance of rapid cognition illustrated and sparked questions about our complex and mysterious brain. Gladwell’s theory, “thin-slicing,” is the concept that our unconscious mind makes lightning decisions based on preconceived n