V.S. Ramachandran has exploded the boundaries of modern science - so much so that he has been praised by Richard Dawkins as a latter-day Marco Polo. A specialist in brain damage, he is famous for an instinctive, intuitive approach to neurological disorders that has led him to successfully 'amputate' phantom limbs, as well as solving the riddles of apotemnophilia (an obsession with self-amputation), and Capgrass syndrome (where patients who are in all other respects fully recovered become convinced that their loved ones are imposters). This new book will explore why the human brain is so unique and how it became so enchantingly complex. Taking us to the frontiers of neurology, he reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about the brain and how it evolved. Along the way we hear stories that are by turns moving, funny, tragic and disturbing, but always utterly fascinating.

V. S. Ramachandran is director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, Distinguished Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, and adjunct professor of biology at the Salk Institute.

Ramachandran trained as a physician and subsequently went on to obtain a PhD on a scholarship from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. His early work was on visual perception, but he is best known for his experiments in behavioral neurology, which, despite their extreme simplicity, have had a profound impact on the way we think about the brain. He has been called “a latter-day Marco Polo” by Richard Dawkins and “the modern Paul Broca” by the Nobel laureate Eric R. Kandel.

In 2005 Ramachandran was awarded the Henry Dale Medal and elected to an honorary life membership by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. His other honors and awards include a fellowship from All Souls College, two honorary doctorates, the annual Ramón y Cajal Award from the International Neuropsychiatric Association, and the Ariens Kappers Medal from the Royal Nederlands Academy of Sciences. In 2003 he gave the annual BBC Reith lectures, the first of which was given by Bertrand Russell in 1949. In 1995 he gave the Decade of the Brain Lecture at the 25th annual (Silver Jubilee) meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Most recently, the president of India conferred upon him the third-highest civilian award and honorific title in India: the Padma Bhushan.

Ramachandran’s much-acclaimed book Phantoms in the Brain formed the basis for a two-hour PBS special. He has appeared on the Charlie Rose show, and Newsweek named him a member of the “Century Club”—one of the one hundred most important people to watch this century.