I just bought my ticket to hear Oliver Sacks speak at UCSB.

Dr. Sacks is a neurologist and a frequent guest on my favorite radio show and podcast, Radiolab, where he talks about strange things our brains do. This is a topic that fascinates and terrifies me. I have a lot of unresolved questions about the nature of the mind and its relationship to the brain. (I was a Philosophy major in college, which only exacerbated the problem.) I love movies that raise issues of consciousness, memory, and personal identity like Memento and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Heck, I've even written a storytelling game about these ideas.

Dr. Sacks has written several excellent books about his experiences with patients suffering from neurological disorders that might best be described as "philosophically challenging," so I'm excited to hear him speak.  The second chapter of A Penny For My Thoughts starts with this quote from his classic work The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, and think it sums up what I find interesting about his work:

The patient’s essential being is very relevant in the higher reaches of neurology, and in psychology; for here the patient’s personhood is essentially involved, and the study of disease and of identity cannot be disjoined.