Experts
Oliver Sacks
Professor of Neurology & Psychiatry, Columbia University
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Oliver Sacks discusses the intersection of writing and medicine. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Health & Medicine, Love, Sex, & Happiness, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on His Early Encounters With Sleeping Sickness
Oliver Sacks remembers his first encounter with sleeping sickness. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on His Book 'Musicophilia'
Oliver Sacks discusses his most book, "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Arts & Culture
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Oliver Sacks on Medical Research
Oliver Sacks discusses sterovision, amusia, and how his books come together. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks Discusses New Topics in Neurology
Oliver Sacks talks about his interest in studies of sensory perception. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on Framing Neurological Disorders
Often doctors disagree on treatments, says Oliver Sacks. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on Hallucinations
Oliver Sacks explains the difference between natural and induced hallucinations. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Health & Medicine, Media & Internet, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on Medicine and Humanism
Looking at the individual behind the disorder with Oliver Sacks. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Media & Internet
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Oliver Sacks on Manipulating the Brain
Oliver Sacks discusses changing the brain through meditation, and listening your way to Harvard. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on the Left and Right Brain
Oliver Sacks explains the different but equal hemispheres of the brain. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on Humans and Myth-making
Humans naturally create stories and narratives, says Oliver Sacks. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Belief, Environment, Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks on Charles Darwin
Some of Darwin's most revolutionary ideas were introduced through botany, says Oliver Sacks. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks and how the iPod Changes Us
The benefits and dangers of iPod listening. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Arts & Culture, Science & Tech
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Oliver Sacks Has Questions about the Brain
Oliver Sacks voices his questions about the human brain. Read More
October 7, 2008 | In Health & Medicine, Science & Tech
Oliver Sacks is a psychiatrist and neurologist best known for his collections of case histories from the far borderlands of neurological experience, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars, in which he describes patients struggling to live with conditions ranging from Tourette's syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation, and Alzheimer's disease.
In 1966, Dr. Sacks began working as a consulting neurologist for Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, a chronic care hospital where he encountered an extraordinary group of patients, many of whom had spent decades in strange, frozen states, like human statues, unable to initiate movement. He recognized these patients as survivors of the great pandemic of sleepy sickness that had swept the world from 1916 to 1927, and treated them with a then-experimental drug, L-dopa, which enabled them to come back to life. They became the subjects of his book Awakenings, which later inspired a play by Harold Pinter and the Oscar-nominated feature film called Awakenings.
In July of 2007, Sacks was appointed Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, and he was also designated the university's first Columbia University Artist. Sacks Latest book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007), was has been Revised and Expanded in a new edition that was released in September of 2008.
