Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran (born 10 August 1951) is an Indian-American neuroscientist. He is known for his experiments and theories in behavioral neurology, including the invention of the mirror box. Ramachandran is a distinguished professor in UCSD's Department of Psychology, where he is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition. After earning a medical degree in India, Ramachandran studied experimental neuroscience at Cambridge, obtaining his PhD there in 1978. Most of his research has been in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics. After early work on human vision, Ramachandran turned to work on wider aspects of neurology including phantom limbs and phantom pain. Ramachandran also performed the world's first "phantom limb amputation" surgeries by inventing the mirror therapy, which is now widely used for reducing phantom pains (with the goal of eliminating phantom sensations altogether in long term), and also for helping to restore motor control in stroke victims with weakened limbs. Ramachandran's books Phantoms in the Brain (1998), The Tell-Tale Brain (2010), and others describe neurological and clinical studies of people with synesthesia, Capgras syndrome, and a wide range of other unusual conditions. Ramachandran has also described his work in many public lectures, including lectures for the BBC, and two official TED talks.
Biography Ramachandran was born in 1951 in Tamil Nadu, India. His mother had a degree in mathematics. His grandfather was Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer, one of the framers of India's constitution. Ramachandran's father, V. M. Subramanian, was an engineer who worked for the U.N. Industrial Development Organization and served as a diplomat in Bangkok, Thailand. Ramachandran attended schools in Madras, and British schools in Bangkok. Ramachandran obtained an M.B.B.S. from Stanley Medical College in Chennai, India. In 1978, Ramachandran obtained a Ph.D. from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Later he moved to the US, where he spent two years at Caltech as a research fellow working with Jack Pettigrew before being appointed assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego in 1983. He became a full professor there in 1988. He currently holds the rank of distinguished professor in the UCSD Psychology Department, and is the director of its Center for Brain and Cognition, where he works with graduate students and researchers from UCSD and elsewhere on emerging theories in neuroscience. As of July 2019, Ramachandran is also a professor in the UCSD Medical School's Neurosciences program. and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1987, Ramachandran married a fellow scientist who became his frequent co-author as Diane Rogers-Ramachandran. They have two sons, Chandramani and Jaya. Ramachandran's scientific work can be divided into two phases. From the early 1970s until the late 1980s, Ramachandran's work focused almost exclusively on human visual processing, especially on stereopsis. Ramachandran began publishing research in this area beginning in 1972, with a paper in Nature while still a student at Stanley Medical College. In 1991, Ramachandran was inspired by Tim Pons's research on cortical plasticity. Pons demonstrated cortical reorganization in monkeys after the amputation of a finger. Ramachandran was one of the first researchers to recognize the potential of neuroimaging technology to demonstrate the plastic changes that take place in the human cortex after amputation. Ramachandran then began research on phantom limbs, but later moved on to study a wider range of neurological mysteries, including body integrity dysphoria and the Capgras delusion. Ramachandran has encountered skepticism about some of his theories. Ramachandran has responded, "I have—for better or worse—roamed the whole landscape of visual perception, stereopsis, phantom limbs, denial of paralysis, Capgras syndrome, synaesthesia, and many others." Ramachandran has served as a consultant in areas such as forensic psychology and the neuroscience of weight reduction. In 2007, Ramachandran served as an expert witness on pseudocyesis (false pregnancy) at the trial of Lisa Marie Montgomery. Ramachandran has served as a consultant to the Modius company which is developing weight reduction technology that relies on electrically stimulating parts of the brain that control weight loss.
In his scientific work, Ramachandran often uses simple equipment, such as mirrors or old-fashioned stereoscopes, rather than complex brain imaging technologies such as fMRI. Ramachandran has been outspoken about his intuition-based approach to studying the brain. In an interview with Frontline magazine Ramachandran stated:Intuition is what gets you started; then you need empirical studies... brain-imaging technology often lulls you into a false sense of having understood what's going on. So sometimes, not having technology - that's my own approach and that of some of my colleagues, we use it only when it's absolutely essential, just like medical diagnostics. We rely more on intuition in doing simple experiments, because if you rely on fancy medical imaging, you become less creative.
Research and theory
Phantom limbs
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