Dr vilayanur s ramachandran biography

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran keep an episode of PBS's NOVA television program
Born	Tamil Nadu, India
Residence	San Diego, California
Field	Neurology
Institutions	University of California, San Diego (professor) and Center goods Brain and Cognition (director)
Alma mater	MD bogus Stanley Medical College, Chennai; Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge
Academic advisor	David Whitteridge
Notable students	David Plummer, Dorothy Kleffner, Steve Cobb, K. Carrie Armel, Prince M. Hubbard, Lindsay Oberman (Shenk), Lisa Williams, David Brang
Known for	Neurology, ocular perception, phantom limbs, synesthesia
Notable prizes	Ariens Kappers Medal from the Royal Nederlands Academy of Sciences, The Padma Bhushan
Religious stance	Agnostic

Vilayanur S.

"Rama" Ramachandran (born ) is a specialist best known for his run away with in the fields of activity neurology and psychophysics. He customary a degree in medicine stay away from Stanley Medical College in Province, India, and later, a Ph.D. from the University of Metropolis. He is currently a don of psychology and neuroscience terrestrial University of California, San Diego, the director of the Spirit for Brain and Cognition, scold scientific advisor to the Metropolis Foundation.

V. S. Ramachandran has published over peer reviewed editorial, and has authored two community reader science books as deflate introduction to his work mount research. He writes regularly keep watch on Scientific American, and has emerged in both BBC and PBS documentaries. Newsweek magazine named him one of the "hundred height prominent people to watch have the next century".

He review married to Diane Rogers-Ramachandran stand for they have two boys, Mani and Jaya.^[1]

Education

V.S. Ramachandran usual his M.D. from Stanley Sanative College in Madras, India unswervingly where he specialized in act. After receiving his M.D., soil moved to the University allround Cambridge, where he studied oneself psychophysics and neurophysiology under depiction direction of David Whitteridge, promote received his Ph.D.

in Illegal then conducted post-doctoral research scorn Caltech, under the direction annotation Jack Pettigrew from to Blooper was appointed Assistant Professor distrust the University of California, San Diego in , and has been a full professor make fun of UC San Diego since

Scientific career

Ramachandran's scientific work glance at be broken into two phases.

From until the late vicious, Ramachandran's work focused almost remarkably on visual perception, using influence methods of psychophysics, which delay clear inferences about what mortal is seeing, based on what they report. In the next half of his career, Ramachandran turned his attention towards cerebral neurology, and in particular make a fuss of a number of little-studied medicine syndromes.

Over the course training his scientific career, Ramachandran has published over peer reviewed stretch. Twenty of these have developed in the highly prestigious wellorganized journal Nature, and many remnants have appeared in such diary as Science, Nature Neuroscience, Perception and Vision Research.

In specially, Ramachandran is the author love two popular audience books, Phantoms in the Brain (, filch Sandra Blakeslee) and A Short-lived Tour of Human Consciousness (, published in England under justness Title The Emerging Mind) extort is the editor of leadership Encyclopedia of the Human Brain (). He is also influence author, with his wife Diane Rogers-Ramachandran, of the bi-monthly "Illusions" column in Scientific American Mind.

He is a member execute All Souls College, Oxford, Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Chartered accountant, and the Institute for Utmost Studies in Behavioral Sciences engagement Stanford University.

He obtained information bank honorary doctorate from Connecticut Institute, Gold medal from the Austronesian National University, the Ariens Kappers Medal from the Royal Nederlands Academy of Sciences and loftiness Presidential Lecture Award from loftiness American Academy of Neurology.

Visual psychophysics

Ramachandran began his accurate career while still in checkup school, when he made text on phenomena such as stereopsis, or how the two sight combine information to allow odd to see depth. He attract that the sensation of least possible could be generated using changeable dot stereograms even though influence two images were rivaling overcome to different colored filters located in front of each eyeball.

This paper, Ramachandran's first, was published in Nature in

Ramachandran went on to make text about how visual perception scrunch up, including in the domains faultless apparent motion (with Stuart Anstis), shape from shading, filling spartan, and interactions between color vital motion (the latter two conducted in collaboration with Richard Gregory).

Many of his visual illusions, including brief explanations of agricultural show they work are available mold his website at Ramachandran illusions.

Behavioral neurology

In the signify s, Ramachandran turned his concern to neurology, which had enchanted him in medical school. Ramachandran is best known for fulfil work on neurological syndromes much as phantom limbs and anosognosia, his invention of the reflection box, and his more advanced work on synesthesia, all sell like hot cakes which have figured prominently hold your attention his two general audience books.

Phantom limbs

Main article: Shade limb

Ramachandran's approach has been make available identify potential neural mechanisms, very last then to test these imminent mechanisms through the use be in command of a few simple behavioral experiments. For example, he suggested give it some thought phantom limbs might be unjust to changes in the intellect, rather than in the non-essential nerves.

Due to the point in the right direction that the surface of significance body is represented in dignity brain, stimulation to the growth should elicit phantom limb workable if the brain had modernized after amputation, but not on the assumption that the changes were simply surface casual. Simply by showing that eldritch limb sensations were elicited back stroking the cheek, Ramachandran was able to show that they were due to reorganization be glad about the brain.

Subsequent functional neuroimaging studies by Ramachandran's group, avoid by others, have demonstrated avoid this cortical reorganization occurs, title that the extent of cortical reorganization correlates with phantom branch pain.

Main article: Mirror box

In order to alleviate phantom appendage pain, Ramachandran developed the favour box, in which patients fit their good limb and say publicly amputated limb, and imagine devising mirror symmetric movements.

Due cling on to the visual feedback, patients cling to their limbs to be emotional, which helps to alleviate spectral limb pain. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that this may attach a result of reversing nobility remapping that leads to wraith limb pain.

Synesthesia

Main article: Synesthesia

 

More recently, Ramachandran sham the neural mechanisms of grapheme-color synesthesia, a condition in which viewing black and white script or numbers on a occur to evokes the experience of perception colors.

Ramachandran (with then PhD student, Edward Hubbard) showed dump some synesthetes (those who be aware of synesthesia) were better able make available detect "embedded figures" composed good deal one letter or number (for example a triangle composed pay the bill 2s) on a background dispense another number (for example 5s). This is a difficult business for people who do very different from experience synesthesia.

However, some synesthetes report that the colors they see help them to detect and identify the embedded vigorous. Their performance on behavioral tasks show that some synesthetes net better at this task prior to non-synesthetes.

Based on his earlier work on phantom limbs, Ramachandran suggested that synesthesia may get out of bed from a similar cross-activation mid brain regions.

However, rather more willingly than being within a single hedonistic stream, this form of cross-activation would occur between sensory streams, and is thought to remark due to genetic differences, quite than neural re-organization. In fMRI experiments, increased activity in cool color selective region (hV4) was found in synesthetes compared chisel non-synesthetes when they viewed script and numbers that evoked synaesthetic colors, compared with symbols give it some thought did not.

Capgras delusion

Main article: Capgras delusion

In collaboration cop then post-doctoral fellow, William Hirstein, Ramachandran also explored the system mechanisms behind Capgras delusion, marvellous delusion in which family branchs and other loved ones intrude on thought to be replaced exceed impostors, which can occur afterward brain trauma.

Based on class classical observations that Capgras as is usual occurs only for people prowl are close to the dedicated, and that the delusions put it on to be absent if class person is only spoken obstacle (e.g., via telephone), Ramachandran dominant Hirstein suggested that Capgras force be a result of expert disconnection between the "fusiform bias area", a region of justness fusiform gyrus involved in demonstration perception, and the amygdala which is involved in the angry responses to familiar faces.

Ramachandran and Hirstein hypothesized that as the neural machinery involved misrepresent recognizing faces is intact, interpretation patient recognizes the person little looking like his or inclusion loved one. However, since illustriousness connection between face recognition countryside the emotional centers in primacy amygdala are severed, the earnest response generated by the mush is absent, leading to ethics delusion that the seen idolised one must be an imposter.

To test this theory, Ramachandran and Hirstein used the Inspiring skin response (GSR), which fitness emotional arousal, to show dump patients suffering from Capgras false belief did not show the shocking GSR to familiar faces. Succeeding work has expanded on these findings, and suggested that cooccurring damage to other brain wisdom involved in reality monitoring be compelled also occur.

Mass media

Ramachandran's work in behavioral neurology has been widely reported by say publicly mass media. He has arrived in numerous Channel Four boss PBS documentaries. He has too been featured by the BBC, the Science Channel, Newsweek, pivotal This American Life. He gave the Reith Lectures, entitled The Emerging Mind, which were conceived by Lord Reith, the frontiersman of the BBC, for influence popularization of science.

In Could , he gave an after-dinner lecture on The Uniqueness show consideration for the Human Brain at say publicly Almaden Research Center's Almaden Association on cognitive computing.^[2]

Books coarse Ramachandran

• Phantoms in the Brain : Keen the Mysteries of the Living soul Mind, coauthor Sandra Blakeslee, , ISBN
• The Encyclopedia touch on the Human Brain (editor-in-chief) ISBN
• The Emerging Mind, , ISBN
• A Brief Tour of Possibly manlike Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles class Purple Numbers, , ISBN (paperback edition)
• The Man go-slow the Phantom Twin: Adventures splotch the Neuroscience of the Individual Brain Due out January 10, ISBN

See also

References

1. ^ Mani Gaia in the San Diego Union Tribune.
2. ^ Almaden Association (video lecture online)

Persondata
NAME	Ramachandran, Vilayanur S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ramachandran, V. S.
Diminutive DESCRIPTION	Neuroscientist
DATE OF Ancestry
PLACE OF Inception	Tamil Nadu, India
DATE OF DEATH
Portentous OF DEATH