This study provided a really interesting insight into the difference between long and short term memory and the formation of new memories.
As a result of this, he believes he is still a solider in the Second World War, as he is unable to remember anything that has happened since that time. Therefore, Mr P really is unable to distinguish between his wife and a hat! For me, this was the first time that I considered that different senses are associated with different areas of the brain.Īnother particularly interesting case in this book describes a Jimmie G who has Korsakoff’s syndrome and is unable to form new memories. However, if he were able to touch it or it made a sound, he would immediately recognise the object. For example, if Mr P were presented with an object he would not be able to tell what it was by just looking at it. Visual agnosia is effectively the inability to recognise objects by sight alone. The title of the book gets its name from one of the patients, Mr P, who is suffering from visual agnosia. This is a series of short case studies of some of the most notable patients Sacks encountered during his career. Sacks’s writing has gained poignancy since 1985, as Sacks himself later discovered that he, just like the title character of his book, had face blindness-further emphasizing the close empathetic bond between Sacks and his subjects.One book that particularly inspired me to study Biomedical Sciences was The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by neurologist Oliver Sacks. Sacks’s role, in a way, is that of a translator and an interpreter, who uses medical knowledge, philosophy, and basic human decency to de-stigmatize mental illness and show readers how his patients maintain their spirit and dignity. At times, particularly in the fourth part of the book, Sacks can barely conceal his contempt for the way society treats people with mental illnesses, shunning them and dismissing their unique gifts.
He’s interested in investigating people with rare neurological conditions, not simply because of his duties as a doctor, but because he wants to understand how human beings live with their conditions and adapt accordingly.
Sacks is an erudite man (sometimes comically so) whose knowledge of music, literature, and history matches his knowledge of neurology. Although Sacks’s primary role in the book is that of an observer and a dispassionate scientific researcher, we gradually get a distinct sense of his personality. The author and narrator of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks spent many years working with patients with rare neurological disorders, and his research formed the basis for the book (each chapter is structured around a different patient).
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