Imagine waking up one day and discovering that you…have no leg. Instead, something alien is lying on the bed, obviously thrown up. What’s this? Who did this? Horror, panic…
Imagine waking up one day and discovering that you…have no leg. Instead, something alien is lying on the bed, obviously thrown up. What’s this? Who did this? Horror, panic… Feelings are so unusual that they are almost impossible to convey. The well-known neurophysiologist and writer Oliver Sacks tells about how the body image is violated (as these sensations are called in the language of neuropsychology), in his poignant book “The Foot as a Support Point”. While traveling in Norway, he fell awkwardly and tore ligaments in his left leg. He underwent a complex operation and recovered for a very long time. But the understanding of the disease led Sachs to understand the nature of the bodily «I» of man. And most importantly, it was possible to draw the attention of doctors and scientists to rare disorders of consciousness that change the perception of the body and to which neurologists did not attach much importance.
Translation from English by Anna Aleksandrova
Astrel, 320 p.