Introduction to Oliver Sacks

In *The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat*, Oliver Sacks shares vivid case studies of patients whose conditions disrupt perception, memory, and identity in ways that challenge the most basic assumptions of the Self. Rather than reducing people to diagnoses, Sacks explores what it actually feels like to live with these neurological differences—reviving a tradition of detailed, narrative case histories that had largely disappeared in modern, data-driven medicine. A key theme in Sacks’ work is how uneven our understanding of the brain can be. While disorders of the left hemisphere (often tied to language) have been extensively studied, he notes that right-hemisphere conditions—affecting perception, recognition, and our sense of reality—have often been neglected, almost as if they were “alien” to neurology itself. These case studies are both fascinating and terrifying! Please join us for a discussion based on the work of Oliver Sacks. We will look at a few of his case studies and discuss some of his famous patients and colleagues, including Temple Grandin and Susan Schaller. All are welcome and no reading is required!