Friday TED Talk: Oliver Sacks Discusses Hallucinations

Famed neurologist Oliver Sacks gave the talk shown below at the February 2009 TED Conference in Long Beach. He shares with us some details about the fascinating history and etiology of "Charles Bonnet Syndrome" -- first described in the eighteenth century -- when visually impaired people experience vivid hallucinations:

Oliver Sacks in person is as humane and as sensitive a physician as he conveys to us in his many books. He identifies in this case with his patients because, as he reveals at the end, he is blind in one eye and experiences some mild Bonnet hallucinations himself.

This talk may be watched in a high-resolution version (.mp4) here, and may be downloaded in that and other formats from this page. There is more about Oliver Sacks here; his homepage is here; and you may read a very informative interview with him here.