River of Consciousness

Author: Oliver Sacks Series: My First Touch and Find

The River of Consciousness is a remarkable culmination of a lifetime's research into the way the brain works by the celebrated late neurologist Oliver Sacks.

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Summary

The River of Consciousness is a remarkable culmination of a lifetime's research into the way the brain works by the celebrated late neurologist Oliver Sacks.

Description

In his previous books, Oliver Sacks had addressed questions of the brain and mind through the lens of case histories of individuals with neurological disorders. Recently, however, he had been reflecting on his experiences with such patients in the context of a lifetime of medical practice, and in light of recent neuroscientific evidence and theories. The River of Consciousness will be a broader and more direct look at how the brain and mind work, as always, incorporating Sacks' rich historical and personal context.Advances in neuroscience have revolutionised our ability to visualise the brain in action. For the first time we are able to close the gap between the philosophical questions which have consumed the world's thinkers since the eighteenth century and the true physiological basis of perception and consciousness. In The River of Consciousness, Sacks will examine questions of memory, time, and consciousness. How do we think, how do we remember? Do different individuals have different speeds or ways of thinking? Is memory reliable? How do the neural correlates of memory differ for true memories and false memories? How do we construct our sense of time, our visual world? What is consciousness, neurologically speaking? And most importantly, what is creativity?

Critic Reviews

Oliver Sacks has become the world's best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness Guardian
The poet laureate of medicine The New York Times
Oliver Sacks is a neurologist, a man of humane eloquence, and a genuine communicator Observer

About the Author

Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine.' His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.