Dr. Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran

"Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars. Apes live, contend, breed, and die in forests-end of story. Humans gaze inward, piecing together the puzzle of our own unique and marvelous brain. It makes the mind reel. How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?!" (Tell-Tale Brain). Ramachandran is an impossibility, teaching humans to look inwards to find the stars just within our reach. He teaches people something a select few will ever realize- as long as they have those three pounds of jelly, they can do anything. In 1951, Rama was born into an upper class family in Tamil Nadu in India. Due to his father's position as a UN diplomat, Rama traveled the world and was exposed to various scientific curriculums. As the years passed he pursued visual perception at Madras and Cambridge; he was fairly successful in a short period of time. Soon after he switched fields and studied neuroscience, and since then he has been called, "The Marco Polo of Neuroscience," by Richard Dawkins and one of TIME magazine's "100 most prominent people to watch" in the 21st century. Rama is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and a professor with the psychology Department and neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. In this position he has published several books, such as the Tell-Tale Brain and Phantoms in the Brain, and made significant impacts in several fields: agnosia, phantom limbs, synesthesia, mirror neurons, autism, language evolution, aphasia, art/aesthetics, and visual systems. However, Ramachandran is not a hero for his accomplishments, but rather his strength of character. Not for his intelligence, but for the way he applies it. A hero does for the good of others, to sate his own curiosity while bringing understanding, and leaves a mark so others may be inspired to follow in his footsteps. Therefore, Ramachandran is a hero due to his relentless drive, initiative, and creative scope.

Ramachandran's passion makes him an excellent role model, which is a culmination of his love for science and his powerful aspirations. As a child, Ramachandran was chauffeured around the globe, going from India, to Thailand, England, Indiana, and back again. Through interactions with his family and teachers, he developed a curious love interest for the sciences: "In India, it was unheard of somebody wanting to be a paleontologist, because there were no jobs. It's like wanting to be an astronaut." Many children also love other sciences; they were all fascinated about the inner workings of the universe (Khabar). By comparing the field of paleontology to "wanting to be an astronaut", he puts his passion in perspective and explains how elusive and wonderful science seemed to a child. Even though many children had similar passions, Rama stood apart from them, maintaining a love of paleontology by sending small fossils he'd found to museums (which actually proved to be very interesting discoveries and even having a dinosaur named after him). Children today believe that they can reach to the stars, but as they 'grow up', there are told to take the pragmatic approach to life; by showing a continual love through adulthood, Rama shows children and adults that the stars are still within reach. While much of his passion for science came from his mother and uncle, his father, His father, one such pragmatic man, told Rama to pursue medicine and switch to science if he wanted to; that way he would be assured good pay. However, he had no idea how much difficulty men switching practices had, but Rama did it anyways: "Although he was attracted to pure science, under his father's instruction, he studied medicine in Madras." (Anthony). After an experiment on visual perception, "He wrote a paper on his findings in 1971 and sent it to Nature, arguably the world's most prestigious scientific journal, and it was published unrevised." (Anthony) Soon after, he co-authored another paper that was sent to Nature. Though it wasn't a field he loved and rather an idea his father suggested, Ramachandran ended up giving significant contributions to visual perception, even more than the Nature papers. But by forgoing an easy life in medicine, Rama found his first love in neuroscience where he could follow his dreams and search for answers he could only find within the brain. No matter the task: paleontology, visual perception, or neuroscience, Ramachandran tackled each with an unprecedented drive. He is an inspiration to children and adults alike, showing everyone that their dreams, just like the stars, are within reach.

He showed the initiative to propose radical new theories, that, while may be wrong, change the lives of many people and provoke vital conversation over the nature of the human experience. However, many lesser scientists would shy away from announcing new theories, especially those that could provoke controversy if not properly tested. There are those people who are plagued by pain, and sometimes all they need to cure the impossible, is a man who is willing to do the impossible: Ramachandran did several studies to relieve many wars veterans and amputees of the mysterious of phantom limb pain. He proposed using visual feedback with mirrors to trick the brain into believing there was no phantom (Newsmakers). "Among amputees, 90% suffer from phantom limb pain, which can often cause excruciating discomfort." (Anthony). Ramachandran's first great discovery in neuroscience was Mirror Box Therapy. His idea, though audacious, ended up helping tens of thousands of people and was proven to be effective in clinical trials, showing that any hypothesis, given proper testing, can make a huge impact in our understanding. And then there are mirror neurons: a class of nerve cells that fire when they are stimulated and when one sees another person exposed to the same stimulus. Ramachandran claimed that humanity's evolution of consciousness, the explosion of culture similar to the Cambrian period, and the genetic basis of autism was all due to mirror neurons: "All that's separating you from him, from the other person, is your skin. Remove the skin; you experience that person's touch in your mind. You've dissolved the barrier between you and other human beings. you're actually quite literally connected by your neurons. And there is no real distinctiveness of your consciousness from somebody else's consciousness." (TED). This is remarkably more audacious than the solution of using mirrors to cure phantom limb syndrome. He's said on a number of occasions that circumstantial evidence indicates a direct correlation between such things; however, some say that such evidence is not enough and that causal evidence is nonexistent. These explanations of autism and the evolution of human consciousness may very well be proven wrong, but, in the same way as mirror box therapy, Ramachandran may also be offering a brand new perspective on life that no one else is willing to offer. Ramachandran's initiative is indicative of his scientific prowess because science in its nature requires daring. Just as Copernicus (heliocentric model) and Darwin (evolution) did, Ramachandran, though on a smaller scale, proposed seemingly out-of-this-world ideas that are necessary for human understanding, and this world needs people like them so people may see how groundbreaking any inkling of an idea could be.

Ramachandran's work has shifted the paradigm of neuroscience, mainly due to his creativity and nature of his methods. From a young age Ramachandran has followed a remarkably non-technological approach to the sciences. This approach allows him to think outside the box and avoid being constrained to one way of research: "When I say I prefer Q-tips and mirrors to brain scanners and gene sequencers, I don't mean to say I eschew technology entirely. Science should be question driven, not methodology driven. When your department has spent millions of dollars on a state-of-the-art liquid-helium-cooled brain-imaging machine, you come under pressure to use it all the time. As the old saying goes, ―When the only tool you have is a hammer; everything starts to look like a nail." (Khabar). One of the defining things that set Rama apart from other neuroscientists is his freedom to explore without the shackles of technology and to follow a very clear inquiry driven path. By talking about how everything looks like a nail, Ramachandran argues the appropriate use of technology and how logic, reason, and a dash of creative thinking should drive science. The Q-tips and mirrors only speak of some of his great contributions to science, specifically phantom limb syndrome and synesthesia. In a 2007 TED Talk by Ramachandran, he introduces a possible neurological basis of synesthesia and explains how many questions may be answered through current research: "Something very interesting is going on here in the angular gyrus, because it's the crossroads between hearing, vision and touch, and it became enormous in humans. And I think it's a basis of many uniquely human abilities like abstraction, metaphor and creativity." (Ramachandran). Ramachandran's research involves answering many questions, and through observations they've isolated the precise location of the "Why?" mapping the function of the neurological area, and leaving them to ask more questions (opposite of other scientists). Much of Rama's research is also philosophical, asking the basic questions, "Why are we here? What makes us unique?" and this inquiry allows him to follow many paths and get answers. Whether it's the questions he asks or his methodology of experimentation, Ramachandran is an example for others, teaching them how to look at the world through a different perspective. 

Through the perpetuating fascination for the sciences, daring hypotheses, and nature of his intelligence he is a powerful hero. From a young age, Rama showed a remarkable interest in science of all kinds, which carried over to adulthood, allowing him to follow his love even after relative success in the field of medicine. Also, he proposed audacious ideas involving the nature of phantom limb disorder that helped thousands of people, and he continues to proposed radical ideas regardless of backlash. In the name of scientific understanding, everything he does is unique, even how he thinks. In this way, all his ideas just push him even further to unlocking the secrets of the human brain. Ramachandran shows people that what he has done is doable by anyone. Anyone can love and follow something deeply as a child or as an adult. Anyone can take risks without fear, to help people. Anyone can push forward and uncover unknown secrets. In this way, he has encouraged me to reach up and follow my own dreams. He lets me believe that whatever I do will lead to a greater good. He lets me believe that I can change the world. As Ramachandran said, "Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars. Apes live, contend, breed, and die in forests-end of story. Humans gaze inward, piecing together the puzzle of our own unique and marvelous brain. It makes the mind reel. How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?!" (Tell-Tale Brain). But this realization is not the most remarkable thing about Rama. That most remarkable lies in his ability to unlock secrets to the cosmos within our minds and how he teaches us that each of us, with a relentless passion, fiery initiative, dazzling creativity, and our own three pound masses of jelly, can unlock our own cosmos.

Works Cited

Anthony, Andrew. "VS Ramachandran: The Marco Polo of Neuroscience." The Observer. Guardian News and Media, 30 Jan. 2011. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. .

Kamma, Murali. "Brain Man: A Conversation with Dr. V. S. Ramachandran." Khabar. Khabar, Aug. 2011. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. . 

Ramachandran, V. S. The Tell-tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.

"V. S. Ramachandran." Newsmakers. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Biography in Context. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

"Vilayanur Ramachandran." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.