Vilayanur Subramanian "Rama" Ramachandran, born 1951, is a
neuroscientistNeuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
known for his work in the fields of
behavioral neurologyBehavioral neurology is a subspecialty of neurology that studies the neurological basis of behavior, memory, and cognition, the impact of neurological damage and disease upon these functions, and the treatment thereof. Two fields associated with behavioral neurology are neuropsychiatry and...
and visual
psychophysicsPsychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they effect. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, more completely, as "the analysis of perceptual...
. He is the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, and is currently a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Neurosciences Graduate Program at the
University of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
.
Ramachandran is noted for his use of experimental methods that rely relatively little on complex technologies such as
neuroimagingNeuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain...
. According to Ramachandran, "too much of the Victorian sense of adventure [in science] has been lost." Despite the apparent simplicity of his approach, Ramachandran has generated many new ideas about the
brainThe brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
. He has been called "The
Marco PoloMarco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
of
neuroscienceNeuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
" by
Richard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
and "the modern
Paul BrocaPierre Paul Broca was a French physician, surgeon, anatomist, and anthropologist. He was born in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that has been named after him. Broca’s Area is responsible for articulated language...
" by Eric Kandel. In 1997
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
named him a member of "The Century Club", one of the "hundred most prominent people to watch" in the 21st century. In 2011
TimeTime is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
listed him as one of "the most influential people in the world" on the "Time 100" list.
Early life and education
Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran (in accordance with Indian family name traditions, his family name, Vilayanur, is placed first) was born in 1951 in
Tamil NaduTamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
,
IndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. In
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
, one of the classical languages of India, his name is written as விளையனூர் இராமச்சந்திரன். His father, V.M. Subramanian, was an engineer who worked for the
UNThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Industrial Development Organization and served as a diplomat in Thailand and Bangkok. Ramachandran spent much of his youth moving among several different posts in India and other parts of Asia. As a young man he attended schools in Madras, Bangkok and England, and pursued many scientific interests, including
conchologyConchology is the scientific or amateur study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of molluscs, however malacology studies molluscs as whole organisms, not just their shells. Conchology pre-dated malacology as a field of study. It includes the study of land and...
. Ramachandran obtained an M.B.B.S. from
Stanley Medical CollegeStanley Medical College is a government medical college with hospitals, located in Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Though the original hospital is more than 200 years old, the medical college was formally established on July 2, 1938...
in
MadrasChennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...
, India, and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. from
Trinity CollegeTrinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
at the
University of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. While a graduate student at Cambridge Ramachandran also collaborated on research projects with faculty at Oxford, including David Whitteridge of the Physiology Department. He then spent two years at
CaltechThe California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
, as a research fellow working with
Jack PettigrewJohn Douglas Pettigrew is Emeritus Professor of Physiology and Director of the Vision, Touch and Hearing Research Centre at the University of Queensland in Australia.Professor Pettigrew's research interest is in comparative neuroscience...
. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Psychology at the
University of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
in 1983, and has been a full professor there since 1998.
Ramachandran is the grandson of Sir
Alladi Krishnaswamy IyerDiwan Bahadur Sir Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer was an Indian lawyer and member of the Constituent Assembly of India, which was responsible for framing the Constitution of India. He was Advocate General of the Composite Madras State....
, Advocate General of Madras and co-architect of the
Constitution of IndiaThe Constitution of India is the supreme law of India. It lays down the framework defining fundamental political principles, establishes the structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions, and sets out fundamental rights, directive principles, and the duties of citizens...
. He is married to Diane Rogers-Ramachandran and they have two boys, Mani and Jaya.
Scientific career
Ramachandran has studied neurological syndromes to investigate neural mechanisms underlying human mental function. Ramachandran is best known for his work on syndromes such as
phantom limbA phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. 2 out of 3 combat veterans report this feeling. Approximately 60 to 80% of individuals with an amputation experience phantom sensations in their...
s,
body integrity identity disorderBody Integrity Identity Disorder , formerly known as Amputee Identity Disorder, is a psychological disorder wherein sufferers feel they would be happier living as an amputee...
, and
Capgras delusionThe Capgras delusion theory is a disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor...
. His research has also contributed to the understanding of
synesthesiaSynesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...
. More recently his work has focused on the theoretical implications of mirror neurons and the cause of
autismAutism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
. In addition, Ramachandran is known for the invention of the
mirror boxA mirror box is a box with two mirrors in the center , invented by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran to help alleviate phantom limb pain, in which patients feel they still have a limb after having it amputated....
.
He has published over 180 papers in scientific journals. Twenty of these have appeared in
NatureNature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
, and others have appeared in
ScienceScience is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
,
Nature NeuroscienceNature Neuroscience is a monthly scientific journal published by Nature Publishing Group. Its focus is original research papers relating specifically to neuroscience and was established in May 1998. According to the Journal Citation Reports, Nature Neuroscience has a 2009 impact factor of 14.345,...
,
Perception and
Vision Research. Ramachandran is a member of the editorial board of
Medical HypothesesMedical Hypotheses is a medical journal published by Elsevier. It was originally intended as a forum for unconventional ideas without the traditional filter of scientific peer review, "so long as are coherent and clearly expressed" in order to "foster the diversity and debate upon which the...
(Elsevier) and has published 15 articles there.
Ramachandran's work in behavioral neurology has been widely reported by the
mediaMass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
. He has appeared in numerous
Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
and PBS
documentariesDocumentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
. He has also been featured by the
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, the Science Channel,
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
,
Radio LabRadiolab is a radio program produced by WNYC, a public radio station in New York City, and broadcast on public radio stations in the United States. The show is nationally syndicated and is available as a podcast....
, and
This American LifeThis American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...
,
TED Talks, and
Charlie Rose.
He is author of
Phantoms in the Brain which formed the basis for a two part series on
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Channel 4 TV (UK) and a 1-hour
PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
special in the
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He is the editor of the
Encyclopedia of the Human Brain (2002), and is co-author of the bi-monthly "Illusions" column in
Scientific American MindScientific American Mind is a bimonthly American popular science magazine concentrated on psychology, neuroscience, and related fields. By analyzing and revealing new thinking in the cognitive sciences, the magazine tries to focus on the biggest breakthroughs in these fields...
.
Ramachandran has recently lamented that science has become too professionalized. In a 2010 interview with the British Neuroscience Association he stated: "But where I'd really like to go is back in time. I'd go to the Victorian age, before science had professionalized and become just another 9–5 job, with power-brokering and grants nightmares. Back then scientists just had fun. People like Darwin and Huxley; the whole world was their playground."
Human vision
Ramachandran’s early research was on human visual perception using psychophysical methods to draw clear inferences about the brain mechanisms underlying visual processing.
Ramachandran is credited with discovering several new visual effects and illusions; most notably perceived slowing of motion at equiluminance (when red and green are seen as equally bright), stereoscopic "capture" using
illusory contoursIllusory contours or subjective contours are a form of visual illusion where contours are perceived without a luminance or color change across the contour. Friedrich Schumann discovered illusory contours.-Examples:...
, stereoscopic learning, shape-from-shading, and motion capture. He invented (together with Richard Gregory)
filling inIn vision, filling-in phenomena are those responsible for the completion of missing information across the physiological blind spot, and across natural and artificial scotomata. There is also evidence for similar mechanisms of completion in normal visual analysis...
of "artificial scotomas" and discovered a new "dynamic noise after effect." He also invented a class of stimuli (phantom contours) that selectively activate the magnocellular pathway in human vision and that have been used by Anne Sperling, and her colleagues, to evaluate aspects of
dyslexiaDyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
.
Phantom limbs
When an arm or leg is amputated, patients continue to feel vividly the presence of the missing limb as a "phantom limb". Building on earlier work by
Ronald MelzackRonald Melzack, is a Canadian psychologist.After studying for his Ph.D. in 1954 with D. O. Hebb at McGill University in Montreal, he began to work with patients who suffered from "phantom limb" pain — people who feel pain in an arm or leg that has been removed...
(McGill University) and Timothy Pons (NIMH), Ramachandran theorized that there was a link between the phenomenon of phantom limbs and neural plasticity in the adult
human brainThe human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...
. In particular, he theorized that the body image maps in the somatosensory cortex are re-mapped after the amputation of a limb. In 1993, working with T.T. Yang who was conducting
MEGMagnetoencephalography is a technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain, using arrays of SQUIDs...
research at the Scripps Research Institute, Ramachandran demonstrated that there had been measurable changes in the somatosensory cortex of several patients who had undergone arm amputations. Ramachandran theorized that there was a relationship between the cortical reorganization evident in the MEG images and the referred sensations he observed in his subjects. He presented this theory in a paper titled "Perceptual correlates of massive cortical reorganization." Although Ramachandran was one of the first scientists to emphasize the role of cortical reorganization as the basis for phantom limb sensations, subsequent research has demonstrated that referred sensations are not the perceptual correlate of cortical reorganization after amputation. The question of which neural processes are related to non-painful referred sensations has not been resolved.
Mirror visual feedback
Ramachandran is credited with the invention of the mirror box and the introduction of Mirror Visual Feedback (MVF) as a treatment for a variety of conditions. Most patients with phantom arms feel that they can move their phantoms; however for many the phantom is fixed or "paralyzed", often in a cramped position that is excruciatingly painful. Ramachandran created the
mirror boxA mirror box is a box with two mirrors in the center , invented by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran to help alleviate phantom limb pain, in which patients feel they still have a limb after having it amputated....
in which a mirror is placed vertically in front of the patient and had patients look at the mirror reflection of the normal arm so that the reflection was optically superimposed on the felt location of the phantom (thus creating the visual illusion that the phantom had been resurrected). Moving the intact limb creates the illusion that the phantom limb is moving, and over time this illusion reduces the pain experienced by the patient. Several research studies using mirror therapy have produced promising results.
Ramachandran has also suggested that mirror visual feedback (MVF) may help accelerate recovery of arm (and leg) function after paralysis from stroke. In 1998 Ramachandran (and his colleague Eric Altschuler) tested MVF on nine patients with stroke. They found their results encouraging but stated that larger studies were needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this therapy. More recently MVF has also been shown to promote recovery from
complex regional pain syndromeComplex regional pain syndrome is a chronic progressive disease characterized by severe pain, swelling and changes in the skin. It often affects an arm or a leg and may spread to another part of the body.Though treatment is often unsatisfactory, early multimodal therapy can cause dramatic...
in patients who have acute, early symptoms.. For patients who suffer from chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS1) mirror therapy can produce higher levels of pain and is not used as an initial therapy.
Synesthesia
Ramachandran has studied the neural mechanisms of
synesthesiaSynesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...
, a condition in which stimulation in one sensory modality leads to experiences in a second, unstimulated modality. His initial studies focused on
grapheme → color synesthesiaGrapheme → color synesthesia is a form of synesthesia in which an individual's perception of numbers and letters is associated with the experience of colors. Like all forms of synesthesia, grapheme → color synesthesia is involuntary, consistent, and memorable...
, in which viewing black and white letters or numbers (collectively referred to as
graphemes) on a page evokes the experience of seeing colors. Ramachandran (with then PhD student, Edward Hubbard) showed that some synesthetes were better able to detect "embedded figures" composed of one letter or number (for example a triangle composed of 2s) on a background of another number (for example 5s).
Based on his previous work on phantom limbs, Ramachandran suggested that synesthesia may arise from a cross-activation between brain regions. Although the idea of cross-connections dates to some of the earliest work on synesthesia, Ramachandran was the first to give this idea a specific anatomical explanation. Ramachandran suggested that grapheme-color synesthesia is the result of increased connectivity between brain areas that are responsible for the perceptual recognition of letters and numbers and colors, perhaps due to genetic factors, given that synesthesia is known to run in families. Consistent with this model, Ramachandran's group found increased activity in color selective areas in synesthetes compared to non-synesthetes using
fMRIFunctional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI is a type of specialized MRI scan used to measure the hemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. It is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging...
. Using
MEGMagnetoencephalography is a technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain, using arrays of SQUIDs...
, they also showed that differences between synesthetes and non-synesthetes begin very quickly after the grapheme is presented.
More recently, Ramachandran has also begun investigations of other forms of synesthesia, including
number formsNumber Forms are Unicode characters which have specific meaning as numbers, but are constructed from other characters. They consist primarily of vulgar fractions and roman numerals. They are placed in the Unicode codepoint range 0x2150 through 0x218F , except for three fractions in ISO-8859-1...
and tactile → emotion synesthesia.
Additionally, Ramachandran has suggested that synesthesia and conceptual metaphor may share a common basis in cortical cross-activation. This suggestion focuses on the importance of the
angular gyrusThe angular gyrus is a region of the brain in the parietal lobe, that lies near the superior edge of the temporal lobe, and immediately posterior to the supramarginal gyrus; it is involved in a number of processes related to language, mathematics and cognition...
for
multimodal integrationMultimodal integration, also known as multisensory integration, is the study of how information from the different sensory modalities, such as sight, sound, touch, smell, self-motion and taste, may be integrated by the nervous system. A coherent representation of objects combining modalities...
and metaphor production. Following Lakoff and Johnson, Ramachandran argues that metaphors are non-arbitrary. Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that "these rules [of metaphor production] are a result of strong anatomical constraints that permit certain types of cross-activation, but not others."
p. 18 Ramachandran has suggested that the evolution of language is the result of three types of non-arbitrary mappings, 1) between sounds and visual shapes (the bouba-kiki effect), 2) sensory-to-motor synesthesia and 3) motor-to-motor synesthesia (or "synkinesia").
p. 18-23
Ramachandran has helped to advance public awareness of synesthesia by hosting two meetings of the
American Synesthesia AssociationThe American Synesthesia Association is a not-for-profit academic and public society whose mission is to foster and promote the education and the advancement of knowledge of the phenomena of synesthesia, a neurological condition in which stimulation in one sensory modality leads to experiences in...
at UCSD in 2002 and 2011.
Mirror neurons
Ramachandran is known for advocating the importance of mirror neurons. Ramachandran has stated that the discovery of mirror neurons is the most important unreported story of the last decade. He has speculated that research into the role of mirror neurons will help explain a variety of human mental capacities ranging from empathy, imitation learning, and the evolution of language. Ramachandran has also theorized that mirror neurons may be the key to understanding the neurological basis of human self awareness.
Ramchandran has theorized that in addition to motor command mirror neurons there are mirror neurons that are activated when a person observes someone else being touched. In 2008 Ramachandran conducted an experiment in which several phantom arm patients reported feeling touch signals on their phantom arms when they observed the arm of a student being touched. In a 2009 discussion of this theory Ramachandran and Althschuler called these mirror neurons "touch mirror neurons."
Theories of autism
In 1999, Ramachandran, in collaboration with then post-doctoral fellow Eric Altschuler and colleague Jaime Pineda, was one of the first to suggest that a loss of mirror neurons might be the key deficit that explains many of the symptoms and signs of autism spectrum disorders. Between 2000 and 2006 Ramachandran and his colleagues at UC San Diego published a number of articles in support of this theory, which became known as the "Broken Mirror" theory of autism. In 2008 Oberman, Ramachandran and Pineda showed that children with ASD showed abnormal EEG responses only when presented with images of unfamiliar people; when they were presented with images of familiar people their responses were similar to those of normal children.
Recognizing that dysfunctional mirror neuron systems cannot account for the wide range of symptoms that are included in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Ramachandran has theorized that childhood
temporal lobe epilepsyTemporal lobe epilepsy a.k.a. Psychomotor epilepsy, is a form of focal epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent seizures. Over 40 types of epilepsies are known. They fall into two main categories: partial-onset epilepsies and generalized-onset epilepsies...
and
olfactory bulbThe olfactory bulb is a structure of the vertebrate forebrain involved in olfaction, the perception of odors.-Anatomy:In most vertebrates, the olfactory bulb is the most rostral part of the brain. In humans, however, the olfactory bulb is on the inferior side of the brain...
dysgenesis may also play a role in creating the symptoms of ASD. In 2010 Ramachandran stated that "The olfactory bulb hypothesis has important clinical implications" and announced that his group would undertake a study "comparing olfactory bulb volumes in individuals with autism with those of normal controls."
Rare neurological syndromes: Apotemnophilia & Capgras Delusion
In 2008 Ramachandran, along with David Brang and Paul McGeoch, published the first paper to theorize that
apotemnophiliaApotemnophilia is a neurological disorder in which otherwise sane and rational individuals express a strong and specific desire for the amputation of a healthy limb or limbs. It is due to hypothesized damage to the right parietal lobe, as the disorder has features in common with somatoparaphrenia...
is a neurological disorder caused by damage to the right
parietal lobeThe parietal lobe is a part of the Brain positioned above the occipital lobe and behind the frontal lobe.The parietal lobe integrates sensory information from different modalities, particularly determining spatial sense and navigation. For example, it comprises somatosensory cortex and the...
of the brain. This rare disorder, in which a person desires the amputation of a limb, was first identified by
John MoneyJohn William Money was a psychologist, sexologist and author, specializing in research into sexual identity and biology of gender...
in 1977. Building on Ramachandran's previous work identifying representations of body image in the brain, they argued that this disorder stems from a neural body image that is incomplete. Hence the person sees their limb as a foreign appendage that is outside their body. Ramachandran has extended this theory to suggest that anorexia nervosa may be a body image disorder that has its basis in neurological representations of the body, rather than an appetite disorder of the hypothalamus.
In collaboration with then post-doctoral fellow,
William HirsteinWilliam Hirstein is an American philosopher primarily interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, cognitive science, and analytic philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy, director of the Cognitive Science Lab, and the current chair of the Philosophy Department at...
, Ramachandran published a paper in 1997 in which he presented a theory describing the neural basis of
Capgras delusionThe Capgras delusion theory is a disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor...
, a delusion in which family members and other loved ones are thought to be replaced by impostors. Previously, Capgras delusion was attributed to a disconnection between facial recognition and emotional arousal. Ramachandran and Hirstein presented a more specific structural explanation that argued that Capgras delusion might be the result of a disconnection between the "fusiform face area", a region of the
fusiform gyrusThe fusiform gyrus is part of the temporal lobe in Brodmann Area 37. It is also known as the occipitotemporal gyrus. Other sources have the fusiform gyrus above the occipitotemporal gyrus and underneath the parahippocampal gyrus....
involved in
face perceptionFace perception is the process by which the brain and mind understand and interpret the face, particularly the human face.The human face's proportions and expressions are important to identify origin, emotional tendencies, health qualities, and some social information. From birth, faces are...
, and the
amygdalaThe ' are almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.-...
, which is involved in the emotional responses to familiar faces. Additionally, based on their model and the specific responses of the patient they examined (a Brazilian man who had sustained a head injury in a traffic accident), Ramachandran and Hirstein proposed a general theory of memory formation. They speculated that a person suffering from Capgras delusion loses the ability to form a taxonomy of memories and hence they can no longer manage memories effectively. Instead of a continuum of memories that constitute a unified sense of self, each memory takes on its own categorical sense of self.
Awards and honors
Ramachandran was elected to a visiting fellowship at All Souls College,
OxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
(1998–1999). In addition he was a Hilgard visiting professor at
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in 2005. He has received honorary doctorates from Connecticut College (2001) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (2004). Ramachandran received the annual Ramon y Cajal award (2004) from the International Neuropsychiatry Society, and the Ariens-Kappers medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences for his contributions to Neuroscience (1999). In 2003 he gave the annual Reith lectures (the BBC's flagship lectures named in honor of Lord Reith, founder of BBC and launched by Bertrand Russell in 1949). He shared the 2005 Henry Dale Prize with Michael Brady of Oxford, and, as part of the award was elected an honorary life member of the Royal institution for "outstanding research of an interdisciplinary nature". In 2007, the President of India conferred on him the third highest civilian award and honorific title in India, the
Padma BhushanThe Padma Bhushan is the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan, but comes before the Padma Shri. It is awarded by the Government of India.-History:...
. In 2008, he was listed as number 50 in the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll.
Invited plenary lectures
Ramachandran has presented numerous plenary lectures around the world. He gave the Decade of the Brain lecture at the 25th annual meeting of the
Society for NeuroscienceThe Society for Neuroscience is a professional society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., for basic scientists and physicians around the world whose research is focused on the study of the brain and nervous system.-History:...
in 1995 and the Keynote Lecture at the 1999
Decade of the BrainThe Decade of the Brain was a designation for 1990-1999 by U.S. president George H. W. Bush as part of a larger effort involving the Library of Congress and the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health "to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from...
meeting before the
NIHThe National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
and the
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, as well as the
Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
lecture at the Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science in New Delhi. In 2003 he gave the annual BBC
Reith LectureThe Reith Lectures is a series of annual radio lectures given by leading figures of the day, commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service....
s. In 2007 he gave a public lecture that was part of a series sponsored by the Templeton Foundation at the
Royal SocietyThe Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
in London. He gave the 2010 IAS Distinguished Lecture at the
University of BristolThe University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
's Institute of Advanced Studies dedicated to the memory of his longtime friend and collaborator,
Richard GregoryRichard Langton Gregory, CBE, MA, D.Sc., FRSE, FRS was a British psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol.-Life and career:...
. In October 2011, Ramachandran delivered a lecture titled "The Neurology of Human Nature" at the 47th
Nobel ConferenceThe Nobel Conference is the first ongoing academic conference in the United States to have the official authorization of the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. It is held annually at Gustavus Adolphus College in St...
at
Gustavus Adolphus CollegeGustavus Adolphus College is a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America located in St. Peter, Minnesota, United States. A coeducational, four-year, residential institution, it was founded in 1862 by Swedish Americans. To this day the school is firmly...
in Saint Peter, Minnesota. In 2012, he will give the
Gifford LecturesThe Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...
(May 28, 2012 - May 30, 2012) at the
University of GlasgowThe University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
.
Testimony as an expert witness
Ramachandran has served as an expert witness on the delusions associated with
pseudocyesisFalse pregnancy or hysterical pregnancy, most commonly termed pseudocyesis in humans and pseudopregnancy in other mammals, is the appearance of clinical and/or subclinical signs and symptoms associated with pregnancy when the person or animal is not pregnant. Clinically, false pregnancy is most...
(false pregnancy). At the 2007 trial of
Lisa M. MontgomeryLisa Marie Montgomery, is a woman from Melvern, Kansas who confessed to the 2004 murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, an expectant mother, in an attempt to kidnap her unborn baby....
he testified that Montgomery suffered from severe pseudocyesis disorder and that she was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of her acts.
Minotaurasaurus ramachandrani
An interest in paleontology led him to purchase a fossil dinosaur skull from the Gobi desert, which was named after him as
Minotaurasaurus ramachandrani in 2009. A controversy has surfaced around the provenance of this skull. Some paleontologists claim that this fossil was removed from the Gobi desert without the permission of the Chinese government and sold without proper documentation. V.S. Ramachandran, who purchased the fossil in Tucson, Arizona, says that he would be happy to repatriate the fossil to the appropriate nation, if someone shows him "evidence it was exported without permit". For now, the specimen rests at the Victor Valley Museum, an hour's drive east of Los Angeles.
Books authored
- Phantoms in the Brain : Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, coauthor Sandra Blakeslee, 1998, ISBN 0-688-17217-2
- The Encyclopedia of the Human Brain (editor-in-chief) ISBN 0-12-227210-2
- The Emerging Mind, 2003, ISBN 1-86197-303-9
- A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers, 2005, ISBN 0-13-187278-8 (paperback edition)
- The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human is a 2010 nonfiction book by V. S. Ramachandran that explores, from a neurological viewpoint, various aspects of human perception and how they relate to appreciation of art, the development of language, and how perception and the...
, 2010, ISBN 978-0-393-07782-7
External links