There is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are, in fact, connected not just…

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

What do we mean by "knowledge" or "understanding"? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive n…

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinatin…

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith L…

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the t…

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

What the neurology tells us is that the self consists of many components, and the notion of one unitary self may well be an illusion.

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Your conscious life is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons.

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Even though its common knowledge these days, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life - all our feelings, our emotions, o…

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain…

- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran