10: An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, Oliver Sacks

I want Oliver Sacks's job. This is a collection of observations on seven patients with interesting neurological conditions. I took notes rather haphazardly. Here they are, with no real attempt at organisation.

Frontal lobes don't fully develop till age seven.

Many symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome remind me of things I did obsessively in childhood and, to a lesser degree, still do now:
Symmetric tics: compulsions to balance, centre, or touch things "symmetrically".
Obsessions with certain numbers; having to do things a certain number of times (with me this was always an even number, with 2, 4, 8 getting progressively more desirable, "round", and "finished").
A strong sense of personal space; not wanting to sit near people in restaurants and preferring corners (I have this, but I don't have the sudden urge to lunge at anyone near enough and touch them); being uncomfortable in traffic when someone drives by because it feels too close (I definitely have this, but that's likely because I don't drive much at all).
Feelings of violence and rage with extremely sudden onset:

He has only to get a parking ticket or see a police car, sometimes, for scenarios of violence to flash through his mind: mad chases, shoot-outs, flaming destructions, violent mutilation, and death scenarios that become immensely elaborated in seconds and rush through his mind with convulsive speed.

The blind live in time, not space. They have no symultaneous touch perceptions of objects around them and they have to "learn space", the very idea of space and its dimensions, if they become sighted. (How does audition fit in? Presumably there is some auditory space they are aware of--"this sound comes from behind me, while this one comes from in front, at the same time". Sacks does not mention it.) The learning of space reminds one of Charles Hinton and his cubes used for learning how to think in a fourth spatial dimension.

Gerald Edelman has constructed several artificial beings, DARWIN I through IV, as part of testing his theory of neuronal group selection. These roam the world using simple value rules like "light is better than no light" that guide (but do not fully determine) behaviour.

One of the defining characteristics of autism, according to Leo Kanner, is an obsessive insistance on sameness. (I feel I have, and definitely had, this insistance—reading this book made me a neurological hypochondriac.)

Freeman Dyson on Jessy Park, the autistic artist:

I've always felt she was the closest I would ever come to an alien intelligence. Autistic children are so strange and so different from us—and yet you can communicate; there are many things you can talk with her about....[But] she has no concept of her own identity, she doesn't understand the difference between "you" and "I"—she uses pronouns almost indiscriminantly. And so her universe is radically different from mine. Concrete social relations are for her very, very difficult to comprehend. On the other hand, with anything abstract, she has no trouble. So mathematics, of course, is no problem for her, and we can talk very easily about mathematics....I think autism comes about as close as possible to the central problem of exploring the neurological basis of personality. Because these are people whose intelligence is intact, but something at the center is missing.

Things added to my reading and viewing list:
Mary Collins, Colour-Blindness
Alberto Valvo, Sight Restoration after Long-Term Blindness: The Problems and Behavior Patterns of Visual Rehabilitations
Jonathan Miller BBC film Prisoner of Consciousness, 1988