Rain Man is a 1988 American road comedy-drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of abrasive and selfish wheeler-dealer Charlie Babbitt, who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond, an autistic savant whose existence Charlie was unaware of. Morrow created the character of Raymond after meeting real-life savant Kim Peek; his characterization was based on both Peek and Bill Sackter, a good friend of Morrow who was the subject of Bill, an earlier film that Morrow wrote.
Oliver Wolf Sacks was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in London, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Later, he served as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx, where he worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica epidemic, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. His treatment of those patients became the basis of his 1973 book Awakenings, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated feature film, in 1990, starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing and intellectual functioning remain intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage, but a congenital or developmental form of the disorder also exists, with a prevalence of 2.5%.
Derek Paravicini is an English pianist. He resides in London.
"Funes the Memorious" is a fantasy short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). First published in La Nación of June 1942, it appeared in the 1944 anthology Ficciones, part two (Artifices). The first English translation appeared in 1954 in Avon Modern Writing No. 2.
Visual agnosia is an impairment in recognition of visually presented objects. It is not due to a deficit in vision, language, memory, or intellect. While cortical blindness results from lesions to primary visual cortex, visual agnosia is often due to damage to more anterior cortex such as the posterior occipital and/or temporal lobe(s) in the brain.[2] There are two types of visual agnosia, apperceptive and associative.
Clive Wearing is a British former musicologist, conductor, tenor and pianist who developed chronic anterograde and retrograde amnesia in 1985. Since then, he has lacked the ability to form new memories and cannot recall aspects of his memories, frequently believing that he has only recently awoken from a comatose state.
An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales is a 1995 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks consisting of seven medical case histories of individuals with neurological conditions such as autism and Tourette syndrome. An Anthropologist on Mars follows up on many of the themes Sacks explored in his 1985 book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, but here the essays are significantly longer and Sacks has more of an opportunity to discuss each subject with more depth and to explore historical case studies of patients with similar symptoms. In addition, Sacks studies his patients outside the hospital, often traveling considerable distances to interact with his subjects in their own environments. Sacks concludes that "defects, disorders, [and] diseases... can play a paradoxical role, by bringing out latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life that might never be seen, or even be imaginable, in their absence".
Autopsy is a television series of HBO's America Undercover documentary series. Dr. Michael Baden, a real-life forensic pathologist, is the primary analyst, and has been personally involved in many of the cases that are reviewed.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a one-act chamber opera by Michael Nyman to an English-language libretto by Christopher Rawlence, adapted from the case study of the same name by Oliver Sacks by Nyman, Rawlence, and Michael Morris. It was first performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 27 October 1986.
The Echo Maker is a 2006 novel by American writer Richard Powers. It won the National Book Award for Fiction and was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist.
Hemianopsia, or hemianopia, is a visual field loss on the left or right side of the vertical midline. It can affect one eye but usually affects both eyes.
Hyperosmia is an increased olfactory acuity, usually caused by a lower threshold for odor. This perceptual disorder arises when there is an abnormally increased signal at any point between the olfactory receptors and the olfactory cortex. The causes of hyperosmia may be genetic, hormonal, environmental or the result of benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome.
Thorns is a science fiction novel by American author Robert Silverberg, published as a paperback original in 1967, and a Nebula and Hugo Awards nominee.
Proprioception is the sense of self-movement, force, and body position.
Exceptional memory is the ability to have accurate and detailed recall in a variety of ways, including hyperthymesia, eidetic memory, synesthesia, and emotional memory. Exceptional memory is also prevalent in those with savant syndrome and mnemonists.
The Man Who: a theatrical research is the English text of this play by Peter Brook, co-authored by Marie-Hélène Estienne, and created in Paris with Brook's troupe at The Bouffes du Nord Theatre.
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind is a 1998 popular science book by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran and New York Times science writer Sandra Blakeslee, discussing neurophysiology and neuropsychology as revealed by case studies of neurological disorders.
A Leg to Stand On is a 1984 autobiographical account by neurologist Oliver Sacks describing his recovery from psychogenic leg paralysis following a mountaineering accident. The book has been described as a skillful description of the depersonalization of functional neurological symptoms. Neuropsychiatric specialists who have recommended reading the book to their patients have found it can help them cope with their depersonalization symptoms.
Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through the World's Strangest Brains is a 2018 nonfiction book by Helen Thomson. In the book, Thomson interviews people with unusual neurologic conditions such as synesthesia and schizophrenia.
