Davidson alumni are the best. Case in point, Mr. Wearn, who graduated before our parents were even born and left Davidson a great sum of money to bring distinguished guests to speak on campus. Because of Mr. Wearn’s immense generosity Davidson has an annual Wearn Lecture. For instance, in 2013 Angela Davis (if you don’t know who she is, you’re missing out) gave a lecture and held a Q&A session on Black feminism.
This year Vilayanur Ramachandran gave the Wearn Lecture. Fun fact about Dr. Ramachandran: TIME magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011. And let me tell you something, TIME magazine got it right. Ramachandran’s lecture was probably one of the most mind-blowing events that I have ever attended. Also, as an added bonus, he was genuinely hilarious.
You can just see the humor in his eyes.
Dr. Ramachandran began his talk by telling us about the small sect of the population who have an overwhelming desire to remove one of their own limbs; some of these people do eventually get this limb removed. He explained that these patients have too much sensation in these areas, and that their brains somehow omitted this body part from its body image mapping. I have yet to fully wrap my head around this phenomenon, but you can go here if you want to know more.
Dr. Ramachandran is best known for his work with phantom limb, which is when an amputee patient can still feel their missing limbs. In fact, the most common treatment for phantom limb pain, Dr. Ramachandran co-researched. This treatment is simple, you set up a mirror and have the patient put their amputated limbs – the phantom – behind a mirror and use their intact limb to mimic movement in their phantom. When amputee patients have excruciating pain in their phantom limbs, extensive mirror treatment has been shown to significantly decrease or cease pain all together. Isn’t that amazing?! Dr. Ramachandran also made the point to say that it’s also super low cost – around two entire dollars (even though they sell super nifty ones for like $70. I checked)
Dr. Ramachandran ended his lecture on the topic of synesthesia. Synesthesia is the crazy happenings of a person viewing number or hearing a tone and seeing and/or hearing a specific color. Obviously, this is amazing. But naturally, Dr. Ramachandran took it one step further and linked synesthesia to metaphor: synesthesia is the opposite of “metaphor blindness,” which lowered ability to adequately understand metaphorical language while showing no other language deficits. For this reason, people with synesthesia tend to be way more artsy than the average individual. Click here for more info.
All in all, Dr. Ramachandran very well may be the smartest person I’ve ever listened to, and it was a great 1.5 hours of my life that could not have been better spent. I’m pretty sure that I’ve urged y’all before to take some time out of your schedules to attend the talks on campus. It was the main piece of college advice I actually took from my brother, and it hasn’t let me down yet. I mean come on; the ticket was free.
With that in mind, don’t miss Ta-Nehisi Coates lecture November 16th!
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