James suffers from phantom pain through losing his hand, he feels that his hand is constantly clenched and this causes cramps. Dr Ramachandran finds that though inventing a ‘mirror box’, the patient is able to see one limb as two and the movement of this one limb in the mirror appears for the patient as the phantom limb too is moving. One of the patients given a mirror box reported that they were almost instantly releieved from the cramps or spasms endured to to their phantom limb. This was explained by the Neurologists to be due to the visual input, as he states that ‘visual input is important in helping patients’ due to the fact of learned paralysis, which means the brain tries to move the arm ect, but gets no response causing spasms and pain. The mirror box allows patients to believe that the phantom limb is carrying out the commands sent from the brain, even though in reality this is not the case.
Professor Ramachandran also talks about Blind-sight. Graham had a road accident causing brain damage this has lead to him being blind but at the same time still being able to see. He cannot see objects on the right side unless they move as he can only detect the direction of which the object is moving. Ramachandran suggests that there are two pathways going from the eyeball to the brain, and therefore Graham is only using his unconscious blind-sight pathway as the visual path is damaged. Graham compares himself to a lizard as they also cannot see but manage to spot the movement of their food, this is very important for survival. Dr R compares blind-sight to driving a car as he explains we all use it and it allows us to stear our way through the world as if on auto-pilot, without consciously being aware.
The documentary shows how Visual neglect is the opposite to Grahams condition, and is when the blind-sight pathway is damaged. Bill Staten suffers from this and doesn’t pay attention to the left side of his world. Peggy who also neglects the left side drew some daisies from memory, all of which were missing their left sides. This shows her disortion of conciousness and that she is also not consciously aware of the left-side of her world. Tests using a mirror on Bill show that he does not recognize reflections, when the mirror is placed to his side. Bill also has anosognosia which is due to right hemisphere damage, he denies his left hand not recognizing that it si paraysed. When he is asked to move it he relpies it is tied, still believeing he can use it even though he cannot prove this. Ella Sinclair also suffers from this denial through anosognosia and Professor R explains this occurs when the right and left hemispheres of the brain are not working together. The left hemisphere is engaging in denial or self deception but the right side is not correcting, checking or confirming this.
In edisode two Dr Ramachandran investigates three bizarre human conditions, prosopagnosia, the capgras delusion and temporal lobe epilepsy. He explains that there are two main areas in the brain, the ‘what’ area and the ‘how’ area. Philip has a problem with recognition, but there is nothing wrong with his vision. The damage is in his ‘what’ area of the brain making him unable to recognize what it is he is seeing, in this case what an animal is called. Professor Ramachandran states that this si due to damage in a small area of the tempiral lobes in the brain, and that different memory filters were destroyed, which also makes him unable to recognize faces, but can recognize voices.
The Capgras delusion is similar to this David who suffers from this woke up from a coma one day and did not recognize his mother and father believing they are imposters. He even believed his own house was not his, but more extraordinary was him believing himself to be ‘another David’. The professor explains how what we see causes emotion, and when David sees his mother no emotion is produced, as the message does not reach the emotion centres and only goes through the visual centres. All auditory centres are not effected by this
