Mastery (42 page)

In Pons’s experiment, he worked with monkeys whose nerve fibers from the brain to one arm had been severed. In testing out the map of their brains, Pons discovered that when he touched the hand of the dead arm, there was no activity in the corresponding part of the brain, as expected. But when he touched their faces, suddenly the cells in the brain that corresponded to the dead hand began to fire rapidly, in addition to those of the face. The nerve cells in the brain that govern sensation in the hand had somehow migrated to the area of the face. It was impossible to know for
sure, but it seemed that these monkeys were experiencing sensation in the dead hand when their faces were touched.

Inspired by this discovery, Ramachandran decided to conduct an experiment that was astonishing for its simplicity. He brought into his office a young man who, because of a recent car accident, had had his left arm amputated from just above the elbow, and was now experiencing considerable sensation in his phantom limb. Using a cotton swab, Ramachandran proceeded to touch the man’s legs and stomach. He reported completely normal sensations. But when Ramachandran swabbed a particular part of his cheek, the man experienced a sensation both in the cheek and in the thumb of his phantom hand. Moving around the face with the Q-tip, Ramachandran found other areas corresponding to other parts of the missing hand. The results were remarkably similar to those of Pons’s experiment.

The implications of this one simple test were profound. It had been largely assumed in neuroscience that the connections in the brain are hardwired at birth or in the earliest years, and are essentially permanent. The results of this experiment contradicted this assumption. In this case, after a traumatic accident, it appeared that the brain had altered itself in a dramatic fashion, creating whole new networks of connections in a relatively short amount of time. This meant that the human brain is potentially far more plastic than had been imagined. In this case the brain had altered itself in an odd and seemingly inexplicable way. But what if this power to alter itself could be harnessed for positive, therapeutic uses?

Based on this experiment, Ramachandran decided to shift fields, moving into the neuroscience department at UCSD and devoting his time and research to anomalous neurological disorders. He decided to take his phantom limb experiment a step further. Many patients with a severed limb experience an odd kind of paralysis that is highly painful. They feel the phantom limb, they want to move it but cannot, and they feel a cramping and sometimes an excruciating ache. Ramachandran speculated that before the limb had been amputated the brain had learned to experience the arm or leg as paralyzed, and once it had been amputated it continued to feel it that way. Would it be possible, considering the plasticity of the brain, to unlearn this paralysis? And so he came up with yet another incredibly simple experiment to test out his idea.

Using a mirror that he had in his office, he proceeded to construct his own apparatus. He took a cardboard box with the lid removed, and made two armholes in the front of the box. He then positioned the upright mirror inside of it. Patients were instructed to place their good arm through one hole and their severed arm right up to the other hole. They were to maneuver the mirror until the image of their good arm was seen in the position where their other arm should be. In moving their good arm and seeing it
move in the position of the severed one, almost instantly, these patients experienced an alleviation of the feeling of paralysis. Most of the patients who took the box home with them and practiced with it were able to unlearn the paralysis, much to their relief.

Once again, the meaning of this discovery was profound. Not only was the brain more plastic, but the senses were also much more interconnected than previously imagined. The brain did not consist of modules for each sense; instead they overlapped. In this case, pure visual stimuli had altered the sense of touch and sensation. But beyond that, this experiment also called into question the whole notion of pain. Pain, it seemed, was a kind of opinion the body rendered on what it was experiencing, on its own health. This opinion could be tricked or manipulated, as the mirror experiment had shown.

In further experiments, Ramachandran arranged it so that patients would see a student’s arm instead of their own, superimposed over the phantom limb. They would not be aware that this had been done, and when the student moved the arm, they experienced the same relief from paralysis. It was merely the sight of the movement that created the effect. This made the sensation of pain seem increasingly more subjective and subject to alteration.

Over the ensuing years, Ramachandran would perfect this creative style of investigation into an art, transforming himself into one of the leading neuroscientists in the world. He developed certain guidelines for his strategy. He would look for any evidence of anomalies in neuroscience or in related fields, ones that brought up questions that had the potential to challenge conventional wisdom. His criteria were that he had to be able to show it was a real phenomenon (something like telepathy would not fall into this category), that it could be explained in terms of current science, and that it had important implications stretching beyond the confines of his own field. If others were ignoring it because it seemed too weird, so much the better—he would have the research field all to himself.

Furthermore, he looked for ideas that he could verify through simple experiments—no heavy or expensive equipment. He had noticed that those who got large grants for their research, which would include all of the technological gadgetry that went with it, would become embroiled in political games in order to justify the money being spent on them. They would rely on technology instead of on their own thinking. And they would become conservative, not wanting to rock the boat with their conclusions. He preferred to do his work with cotton swabs and mirrors, and by engaging in detailed conversations with his patients.

For instance, he became intrigued by the neurological disorder known as apotemnophilia—the desire of perfectly healthy people to have a limb
amputated, with many of them actually going through with the surgery. Some had speculated that this well-known disorder is a cry for attention, or stems from a form of sexual perversion, or that patients had seen in childhood an amputee and the image had somehow become imprinted as an ideal to them. In all of these speculations, people seemed to doubt the reality of the actual sensation—it was all in their heads, they implied.

Through simple interviews with several such patients, Ramachandran made some discoveries that dispelled these notions. In all cases they involved the left leg, which was curious enough. In talking to them, it seemed clear to Ramachandran that they were not after attention, nor were they sexually perverse, but rather they were experiencing a very real desire, because of some very real sensation. With a pen, they all marked the exact spot where they wanted the amputation.

When he did simple galvanic skin response tests on their bodies (tests that record the registering of slight amounts of pain), he discovered that everything was normal, except when he pricked the part of the leg the patient wanted amputated. The response was through the roof. The patient was experiencing that part of the limb as if it were too present, too intense, and this overactive sensation could only be done away with through amputation.

In subsequent work he was able to locate neurological damage to the part of their brains that create and control our sense of body image. This damage had occurred at birth, or very early on. This meant that the brain could create a body image in a perfectly healthy person that was highly irrational. It seemed as well that our sense of self is far more subjective and fluid than we had thought. If our experience of our own body is something constructed in the brain and can go haywire, then perhaps our sense of self is also something of a construction or illusion, one that we create to suit our purposes, and one that can malfunction. The implications here go beyond neuroscience, and into the realm of philosophy.

The animal world can be divided into two types—specialists and opportunists. Specialists, like hawks or eagles, have one dominant skill upon which they depend for their survival. When they are not hunting, they can go into a mode of complete relaxation. Opportunists, on the other hand, have no particular specialty. They depend instead on their skill to sniff out any kind of opportunity in the environment and seize upon it. They are in states of constant tension and require continual stimulation. We humans are the ultimate opportunists in the animal world, the least specialized of all living creatures. Our entire brain and nervous system is geared toward looking for
any kind of opening. Our most primitive ancestors did not begin with an idea in their heads for creating a tool to help them in scavenging and killing. Instead they came upon a rock, perhaps one that was unusually sharp or elongated (an anomaly), and saw in this a possibility. In picking it up and handling it, the idea came to them to use it as a tool. This opportunistic bent of the human mind is the source and foundation of our creative powers, and it is in going with this bent of the brain that we maximize these powers.

And yet when it comes to creative endeavors, so often we find people going at them from the wrong end. This generally afflicts those who are young and inexperienced—they begin with an ambitious goal, a business, or an invention or a problem they want to solve. This seems to promise money and attention. They then search for ways to reach that goal. Such a search could go in thousands of directions, each of which could pan out in its own way, but in which they could also easily end up exhausting themselves and never find the key to reaching their overarching goal. There are too many variables that go into success. The more experienced, wiser types, such as Ramachandran, are opportunists. Instead of beginning with some broad goal, they go in search of the fact of great yield—a bit of empirical evidence that is strange and does not fit the paradigm, and yet is intriguing. This bit of evidence sticks out and grabs their attention, like the elongated rock. They are not sure of their goal and they do not yet have in mind an application for the fact they have uncovered, but they are open to where it will lead them. Once they dig deeply, they discover something that challenges prevailing conventions and offers endless opportunities for knowledge and application.

In looking for facts of great yield, you must follow certain guidelines. Although you are beginning within a particular field that you understand deeply, you must not allow your mind to become tethered to this discipline. Instead you must read journals and books from all different fields. Sometimes you will find an interesting anomaly in an unrelated discipline that may have implications for your own. You must keep your mind completely open—no item is too small or unimportant to escape your attention. If an apparent anomaly calls into question your own beliefs or assumptions, so much the better. You must speculate on what it could mean, this speculation guiding your subsequent research but not determining your conclusions. If what you have discovered seems to have profound ramifications, you must pursue it with the utmost intensity. Better to look into ten such facts, with only one yielding a great discovery, than to look into twenty ideas that bring success but have trivial implications. You are the supreme hunter, ever alert, eyes scanning the landscape for the fact that will expose a once-hidden reality, with profound consequences.

3. Mechanical Intelligence

From their earliest years the brothers Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) and Orville Wright (1871–1948) displayed a rather unusual interest in the working parts of any kind of device, particularly the elaborate toys their father often brought home to them from his travels as a bishop in the United Brethren Church. They would take these toys apart in a state of extreme excitement, avid to figure out what made them tick. Then they would reassemble them, always with some modification.

Although the boys were reasonably good at schoolwork, neither of them received a high school diploma. They wanted to live in a world of machines, and the only knowledge that really interested them was that which related to the design and construction of some new device. They were extremely practical.

In 1888 their father needed to quickly print out a pamphlet for his work. To help him, the brothers cobbled together their own small job press, using the hinge from a folding buggy top in the backyard, rusty springs, and other pieces of scrap. The press worked brilliantly. Inspired by their success, they improved the design, using better parts, and opened their own printing shop. Those who knew the business marveled at the peculiar press the brothers had concocted, which managed to spit out 1,000 pages per hour, double the usual rate.

The brothers, however, had a restless spirit. They needed constant challenges, and in 1892 Orville discovered the perfect new outlet for them. With the invention of the safety bicycle (the first bicycle featuring two wheels of the same size), America had become seized with a biking craze. The brothers purchased their own bicycles, entered races, and became fanatics in the sport. Soon they were taking their bicycles apart and making minor adjustments. Seeing them at work in the backyard, friends and acquaintances would bring them their own bicycles for repairs. Within months they knew bicycle technology from the inside out, and decided to open their own shop in their native Dayton, Ohio, where they sold, repaired and even modified the latest models.