Why should you read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat?

A classic work of psychology, this international bestseller provides a groundbreaking insight into the human mind. In his most extraordinary book, Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients with inexplicable and often inescapable neurological disorders.

What part of the brain was damaged in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat?

In the book of psychological case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Dr. P was a patient who suffered from left-hemisphere damage and had trouble identifying what he was seeing. In fact, the book is named after Dr. P because he did, literally, mistake his wife’s head for a floating hat.

What did Dr P mistake for his shoe?

I had taken off his left shoe and scratched the sole of his foot with a key—a frivolous-seeming but essential test of a reflex—and then, excusing myself to screw my ophthalmoscope together, left him to put on the shoe himself.

When did Oliver Sacks wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat?

1985

What is Dr P’s problem?

When Dr. P went to an ophthalmologist, he discovered that his eyes were not the problem. Dr. P suffered instead from agnosia—an inability to recognize and interpret visual data.

How long does it take to read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat?

4 hours and 3 minutes

What happened to Oliver Sacks?

Sacks, who was 82 when he died from metastatic cancer, wrote more than a dozen books drawn from his patients’ case histories, including “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” “Musicophilia,” and “The Mind’s Eye.” In 1973’s “Awakenings,” which was turned into a 1990 film with Robin Williams, he recounted using the Apr 9, 2021

Is Dr Sayer from Awakenings still alive?

Oliver Sacks, doctor of ‘Awakenings’ and poet laureate of medicine, dies at 82. Oliver Sacks, the world-renowned neurologist and author who chronicled maladies and ennobled the afflicted in books that were regarded as masterpieces of medical literature, died Aug. 30 at his home in Manhattan.

Why did Oliver Sacks die?

British neurologist Oliver Sacks has died at the age of 82, it has been confirmed. The acclaimed author, whose book Awakenings inspired an Oscar nominated film of the same name, reportedly died of cancer at his home in New York.

When did Oliver Sacks die?

What brain disorder did the music professor suffer from who confused his wife’s head with his hat?

“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, about Dr. P, who has visual agnosia; however, before that diagnosis is reached, Dr. P consults an ophthalmologist when he develops diabetes, thinking that it might affect his vision.

Which visual pathway was damaged in Dr P’s brain?

Thus, as with Dr P., it was not just visual perception, but visual imagination and memory, the fundamental powers of visual representation, which were essentially damaged in this patient—at least those powers insofar as they pertained to the personal, the familiar, the concrete.

What condition caused Dr P to mistake his wife for a hat?

Dr. P.’s condition enables him to see, but not assemble what he sees into holistic pictures—he can see the trees, but not the forest. He mistakes his wife for a hat because, without a holistic sense of his wife as a person, he confuses his sensory data all too easily.