V.S. Ramachandran

V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D. is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor of Neurosciences and Psychology at the University of California , San Diego , and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute. Ramachandran trained as a physician and obtained a medical degree from Stanley Medical College and subsequently a doctorate from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, England.

Becoming Human: Brain, Mind and Emergence

Ramachandran's early research was on visual perception but he is best known for his work in Neurology. He was recently elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, was awarded the John F. Streff Gold Medal from the Neurological Rehabilitation Society of America, a Gold medal from the Australian National University and the Ariens Kappers Medal from the Royal Nederlands Academy of Sciences for distinguished contributions in neuroscience. In 1995 he gave the Decade of the Brain Lecture at the 25th annual (Silver Jubilee) meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and more recently the Inaugural keynote lecture at the Decade of the Brain Conference held by NIMH and the Library of Congress, the D.O.Hebb Lecture at McGill University, the Dorcas Cumming Plenary Lecture at Cold Springs Harbor and the First Hans Lucas Teuber Lecture at MIT. Ramachandran has published over 120 papers in scientific journals (including three invited review articles in the Scientific American), is Editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour and author of the critically acclaimed book Phantoms in the Brain. His work is featured frequently in the major newsmedia and Newsweek magazine recently named him a member of "the century club" - one of the hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century.

Selected Bibliography

Ramachandran, V.S. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of the Human Brain. Academic Press: 2002.

Ramachandran, V.S. and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. Quill: 1999.

Ramachandran, V.S. (Contributor). Art and the Brain: Controversies in Science and the Humanities. Journal of Consciousness Studies. Imprint Academic: October 1999.