Rebecca was always interested in words, and she could understand the concept of a symbol. She has lost all proprioception, or the brain’s innate sense of where each part of her body is located and how they are moving, so over eight years she replaces this by looking at each part as it moves and listening to herself talk while operating her jaw. This strategy was markedly different from that adopted by earlier neuropsychologists, who characterized disorders in terms of the precise deficit in the brain that caused them. Dr. Sacks wondered if the man had damage in his brain that affected his ability to see things or understand what he saw when looking at people and places around him, such as buildings on his right side of the street and famous photographs like Albert Einstein’s face (he couldn’t even recognize it). From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat is a collection of twenty-four clinical “tales” about a wide variety of strange and remarkable neurological disorders. Until the middle of the 1970s, Tourette’s was a relatively unknown disorder, and was thought to be incredibly rare. After consulting with several doctors he was referred to Oliver Sacks who quickly realized that Dr. P had great charm and sophistication when speaking with him directly; however he didn’t look at Sacks as one normally would during conversation, even though they were face-to-face. The first essay in the section called “Rebecca” tells of a girl named Rebecca who has developmental disabilities. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. Once, Sacks spilled matches on the ground and had to ask the twins how many he’d dropped. It’s nowhere to be found…” (57). Jimmie G.’s life has been filled with loneliness, but he’s learned to accept it and remain peaceful throughout his life. Later, after sustaining head trauma from another accident, Donald experienced killing again and again in vivid detail–but he was able to cope with these visions by developing strategies for dealing with them. When his attendants objected to the test, Sacks encouraged José to draw a picture of his pocket watch. When Martin goes back to church and starts singing again it’s like a miracle happens because all of the problems associated with his disabilities are gone and there’s nothing wrong with him at all anymore! Sacks concludes based on this account that Rose “is stacked with an almost infinite number of ‘dormant’ memory-traces,” some of which can be reactivated under special conditions.”. Sacks ends his chapter on the twins by noting bitterly that John and Michael were later separated, and thereafter lost their powers of mathematical calculation, the one great source of joy in their lives. The patient told him that after waking up from a nap, he found someone else’s leg in bed with him. In “The Man Who Fell Out of Bed”, the author describes an encounter he had with a patient when he was in medical school. Soon after, he falls off of his bike while riding down a steep hill and sustains a major head injury. In the introduction to “The World of the Simple,” Sacks confesses that when he first began “working with retardates,” (173) he thought the experience would be miserable. In so doing, he talks about action and the effects of a neurological abundance on a patient’s day-to-day life, rather than talking strictly about the afflicted portion of the brain, as is too often the case in ordinary neurology. The introduction to “Excesses” begins with a discussion of neurological disorders that cause over-excitement. There have been many cases throughout history of people with exceptional mathematical abilities. He explains that the reason for this is either 1) His brain can’t receive visual information, or 2) It receives visual information but isn’t able to process it into holistic judgments of objects. Jimmie has Korsakoff’s, a degenerative illness caused by years of heavy drinking that causes both amnesia and short-term memory loss. He also brings up William Thompson who couldn’t remember anything but had many different identities so he could still think of himself as someone despite not having any memories at all. However, when they did decide to use Haldol again after three months had passed without any medication, the drug performed a miracle for Ray by controlling his tics while having no negative side effects on him whatsoever. A woman named Natasha K. comes into Sacks’ clinic worried that she feels too good. However, those people can tell if someone’s face looks happy or angry. Another patient, Donald, murdered his child while high on PCP but later forgot all about it. Another intellectually disabled patient, Martin A., had an almost perfect knowledge of Western musical history, as well as a sophisticated appreciation for the music of Johan Sebastian Bach. William Thompson’s condition caused him to forget things almost immediately. In “The Man Who Fell Out of Bed” the author describes an encounter he had with an unnamed patient many years ago, back when Sacks was a medical student. Sacks praises her astonishing and unexpected artistic sensibility, marveling at how one’s basic powers of perception can be developed so many decades after infancy. Ray is one of the few patients that Sacks agrees to see. However, the man reported being able to smell the rich odor of his pipe. She also relearned basic things such as talking, walking, and eating. The patient tells Sacks that he had woken up from a nap and, to his surprise and horror, found “someone’s leg” with him in his bed. In 1983, a man named Martin A. was admitted to Oliver Sacks’ clinic with Parkinson’s disease. For the most part, neurology and neuropsychology focus on left-brain deficiencies. Neurology should be focused on understanding how the brain processes sensory data in personal ways because that’s how humans think; otherwise, we’re like Dr. P.’s mind—focused too much on one side (the abstract mechanical). A spinal tap reveals that she has a rare form of acute polyneuritis which has affected the sensory roots of her spinal and cranial nerves. Although he didn’t recognize Sacks as someone he knew already, he immediately identified him as “a doctor.”. He also had too much spinal fluid in his body as a child, which led doctors to diagnose him as autistic. However, in more severe cases of Tourette’s the patients seem to be possessed and become violent. Some are intellectually disabled and have difficulty thinking abstractly; others have a special gift for understanding concrete language. Above all, Stephen found that his sense of sight had become greatly pronounced as well. When asked how this happened, they replied that they just knew there were 111 matches on the ground because it felt right to them. The fourth part of the book is about Sacks’ work with mentally challenged patients, who he finds to be inspirational. During the examination Dr. P took off his shoe and claimed it was part of his foot which led Sacks to believe there might be more wrong than just facial recognition issues going on here as well as failing to identify basic pictures such as animals or furniture correctly either while describing them or identifying what exactly they were within the picture itself such as its overall scene although could still describe each component individually along with other oddities about himself throughout the rest of the book including mistaking pictures hanging on walls for windows looking out into space where he saw aliens outside waiting for their chance to come through those windows into our world among other things before ending up back at home where he tried picking up his wife’s head thinking it was actually a hat after putting it down from earlier in the day before heading over towards her instead of taking off said hat first which is how this story ends!