Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, FRCPwas a British neurologist, naturalist and author who spent his professional life in the United States. He believed that the brain is the "most incredible thing in the universe" and therefore important to study. He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about his patients' disorders, with some of his books adapted for stage and film...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth9 July 1933
fall night thinking
I think hallucinations need to be discussed. There are all sorts of hallucinations, and then many sorts which are okay, like the ones I think which most of us have in bed at night before we fall asleep, when we can see all sorts of patterns or faces and scenes.
technology thinking brain
Although I think it is wonderful to have the whole world of music available in something that small and to have it conveyed with such fidelity almost straight into the brain, I think the technology is also a danger.
creativity math thinking
I think there are dozens or hundreds of different forms of creativity. Pondering science and math problems for years is different from improvising jazz. Something which seems to me remarkable is how unconscious the creative process is. You encounter a problem, but can't solve it.
thinking listening movement
The same areas which are active in listening to music are also active when you imagine music, and this includes the motor areas, too. That explains why earlier, even though I was only thinking of the mazurka, I was thinking in terms of movement.
thinking voice vision
I think there's probably always been visions and voices, and these were variously ascribed to the divine or demonic or the muses. I think many poets still feel they depend on an inner voice, or a voice which tells them what to do.
thinking musical important
I think there is no culture in which music is not very important and central. That's why I think of us as a sort of musical species.
passion thinking musical
I think the brain is a dynamic system in which some parts control or suppress other parts. And if perhaps one has damage in one of the controlling or suppressing areas, then you may have the emergence or eruption of something, whether it is a seizure, a criminal trait - - or even a sudden musical passion.
communication thinking people
We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
beautiful adventure thinking
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
cared feeling giving grateful humble mattered pray thanks
Who cared if there was really any Being to pray to? What mattered was the sense of giving thanks and praise, the feeling of a humble and grateful heart.
art certainly delight demented emotional experience informal painting paintings patients quite recognize respond responsive scarcely seen time visual words
Certainly it's not just a visual experience - it's an emotional one. In an informal way I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive to words and disoriented and out of it. I think that recognition of visual art can be very deep.
asked director meet music seems
When the documentary of 'Awakenings' was made in '73, the first thing the film director asked was, 'Could we meet the music therapist? She seems to be the most important person around here,'
active autonomous functional hearing imagery involved parts seeing super
With any hallucinations, if you can do functional brain imagery while they're going on, you will find that the parts of the brain usually involved in seeing or hearing - in perception - have become super active by themselves. And this is an autonomous activity; this does not happen with imagination.
rivers smell lakes
Hydrogen selenide, I decided, was perhaps the worst smell in the world. But hydrogen telluride came close, was also a smell from hell. An up-to-date hell, I decided, would have not just rivers of fiery brimstone, but lakes of boiling selenium and tellurium, too.