V.S. Ramachandran is a Distinguished Professor in UCSD’s Department of Psychology, where he is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition.
Ramachandran is known for his wide-ranging experiments and theories in behavioral neurology, including the invention of the mirror box.
After earning a medical degree in India, Ramachandran studied experimental neuroscience at Cambridge, obtaining his PhD there. Most of his research has been in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics. After early work on human vision, Ramachandran turned to work on wider aspects of neurology including phantom limbs and phantom pain. Ramachandran invented mirror therapy which is now used to treat amputees with phantom limb pain and also to help restore motor control in stroke victims with weakened limbs.
Ramachandran’s popular books Phantoms in the Brain, The Tell-Tale Brain, and others describe neurological and clinical studies of people with synesthesia, Capgras syndrome, and a wide range of other unusual conditions. Ramachandran has also described his work in many public lectures, including lectures for the BBC, and two official TED talks. Both his scientific research and his popularization of science have been recognized with multiple awards.
Episodes

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What Would Transhuman Brains Mean?
Episode 13
Season 21
26:47
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What can we learn when people deceive? There are all kinds of deception: from lying, duplicity, and disguises, to propaganda, disinformation, and deep fakes. Self-deception,...
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How Does Deception Affect Human Behavior?
Episode 10
Season 21
26:47
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Biologists work in different worlds than do physicists, separated by vast orders of magnitude, numbers of variables, and levels of complexity. Does the process of...
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How Do Breakthroughs Happen in Biology?
Episode 07
Season 21
26:47
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The mysteries of life constitute the science of biology. But solving biological mysteries often require Breakthroughs: new, even radical ways of thinking that disrupt current...
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What are Scientific Breakthroughs in Biology?
Episode 04
Season 21
26:47
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