NARRATIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY
Professor Elizabeth Johnston
Sarah Lawrence College, Spring 2009
 
Office: Titsworth 6A, x2348
Email: ebj@slc.edu
Course Web Pages: http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/NN-09
Course Description:
  

Narrative neuropsychology explores notions of mind, memory, sensory perception, language, consciousness and mind-body interactions through study of cases of the breakdown, hyperdevelopment or recovery of mental function. In this course we will draw upon a mixture of neuropsychological case studies, scientific research papers, novels and memoirs to investigate conditions such as agnosia, amnesia, synesthesia, aphasia, autism, and other alterations in consciousness that arise from brain damage or variations in brain development. Narrative refers to the narrative accounts of neurologists, but also to the view of the human brain as primarily a story-teller. A third sense of the term narrative will be invoked in our reading of current fiction and memoirs that incorporate neuropsychological material. This course is designed for students interested in the intersections of science and art. 

 
Books ordered for the SLC book store:
 
Case Studies: 
Awakenings, Oliver Sacks
An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks (Mars)
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks (Hat)
The Man with a Shattered World, Alexander Luria
The Mind of a Mnemonist, Alexander Luria
 
Novels/Stories:
The Echo Maker, Richard Powers
Lying Awake, Mark Salzman
The Vintage Book of Amnesia, Edited by Jonathan Lethem
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth  Moon

Memoirs:
In The Shadow of Memory, Floyd Skloot
Exiting Nirvana, Clara Claiborne Park
Thinking in Pictures: Expanded Edition, Temple Grandin

 
 
Academic Brain Texts:
 
Ledoux, Joseph (2002). The Synaptic Self.
Heilman, Kenneth (2002). Matter of Mind: A neurologist’s view of brain-behavior  relationships. Oxford   University Press.

 

Reading Assignments:

 

Week 1 (B): January 21st: Introductions and Orientations

 

Week 2 (A): January 28th:

1. Sacks, Oliver (1973). Awakenings, Foreword to the 1990 edition, Prologue, Awakenings (the cases, be sure to read Frances D), and Perspectives sections.
2. LeDoux, Joseph (2002). The Synaptic Self. Penguin: New York. Chapter 1.

Friday Film Screening: Awakenings

Week 3 (B): February 4th: A Sampling of Sacks’ Hat

1. Sacks, Oliver (1987). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Harper Perennial: New York.

   Read as much of Sacks' Hat as you can, definitely including the following sections:1. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (prosopagnosia - described in Heilman, 8) 2. The Lost Mariner (amnesia - described in Heilman, 6) , 9. The President’s Speech (aphasia -described in Heilman, 2), 10. Witty Ticcy Ray (Tourette’s syndrome), 12. A Matter of Identity (more Korsakoff’s), 17. A Passage to India (epilepsy) and 24. The Autist Artist (autism spectrum disorder)
2. Heilman, Matter of Mind, Chapter 2: Language, Chapter 6: Memory, Chapter 8: Sensory Perception and Recognition
3. The Vintage Book of Amnesia, Robert Scheckley, Warm

4. LeDoux, Joseph, The Synaptic Self, Chapter 2

 

Friday Film Screening: Sacks, The Island of the Color-blind

 

Week 4 (A): February 11th: Luria’s “Romantic Science”

1. Luria, The Man with the Shattered World

2. Sacks, Anthropologist on Mars, To See and Not See, The Case of the Colorblind Painter, The Landscape of His Dreams

3. LeDoux, Joseph (2002). The Synaptic Self. Penguin: New York. Chapter 3.

 

Week 5 (B): February 18th: Synesthesia and Hypermnesia

            1. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist, to the end of section 3: His Memory, pg. 73

2. Borges, Jorge Luis, Funes, His Memory in The Vintage Book of Amnesia
3. Nabakov, Speak Memory, (photocopied excerpt)
4. Synaesthesia, Quick Guide, Current Biology
5. LeDoux, Synaptic Self, Chapter 4, to end of pg. 81  

 

Week 6 (B): February 25h: Amnesia I

1. Skloot, Floyd (2003). In the Shadow of Memory.

2. LeDoux, Synaptic Self, Chapter 5

3. The Vintage Book of Amnesia: Jonathan Lethem, Introduction; Thomas Palmer, Dream Science; Lawrence Shainberg, Memories of Amnesia; Dennis Potter, Ticket to Ride 

 

Film Screening: Memento

 

Week 7 (A): March 4th: Amnesia II

1. LeDoux, Synaptic Self, Chapter 7: The Mental Trilogy (read chapter 6 too if you want to know more about memory at the synaptic level)

2. The Vintage Book of Amnesia: Walker Percy, The Second Coming; Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon; Cornell Woolrich, The Black Curtain, Oliver Sacks, The Last Hippie (also in Anthropologist on Mars)

3. Sacks, Oliver, The Abyss, The New Yorker, Available in the New Yorker Archive
4. Friend, Tad, New Man, in The New Yorker, Available in the New Yorker Archive
5. Munro, Alice (1999). The Bear Came Over the Mountain. The New Yorker. Available on the New Yorker archive

 

Film Screening: Away from her

 

Week 8 (B): March 11th: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

1. Salzman, Mark, Lying Awake
2. Heilman, Chapter 3: Emotions
3. Radisson-Polizzotti, Sadi, What about Lewis Carroll? Available online

  SPRING BREAK

 

Week 10 (A): April 8th: The Echo Maker

 

1. Powers, Richard, The Echo Maker

2. LeDoux, The Synaptic Self, Chapter 9: The Lost World

3. Hirstein, W. & Ramachandran, V.S. (1997). Capgras' Syndrome: A novel probe for understanding the neural representation of the identity and familiarity of persons. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 264, 437-444. Available online

            4. Terri Gross Interview with Richard Powers Available on NPR site

Friday Film Screening: Rain Man

 

Week 11 (B): April 15th: The Autistic Spectrum I

1. Sacks, Oliver (1995). An Anthropologist on Mars, Title Chapter & Prodigies (watch the Stephen Wiltshire video on YouTube in connection with ‘Prodigies’).

2. Haddon, Mark, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

3. Page, Tim (2007). Parallel Play. The New Yorker. Available in the New Yorker archive

 

4. LeDoux, The Synaptic Self, Chapter 8: The Emotional Brain Revisited

  Friday Film Screening: Rage for Order (Sacks)

 

Week 13 (A): April 22nd: The Autistic Spectrum II

 

1. Claiborne Park, Clara, Exiting Nirvana

2. Grandin, Temple, Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition. (Chapter 1: Thinking in Pictures, Chapter 2: The Great Continuum, Chapter 6: Believer in Biochemistry, and any other chapter that calls out to you)

3. Losh, Molly & Capps, Lisa (2006). Understanding of emotional experience in autism: Insights from the personal accounts of high-functioning children with autism. Developmental Psychology, 32, 809-818. Available from PsycArticles


 

 

Week 13(B): April 29th: Completing The Circle

  1.      LeDoux, The Synaptic Self, Chapter 11: Who Are You?
2.      Sacks, Anthropologist on Mars, A Surgeon’s Life.

3.   Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker (1993). Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings: Reshaping Clinical Discourse. Configurations, 1(2), 229-245. Available in Project Muse at http://remote.slc.edu:2075/journals/configurations/v001/1.2hawkins.html

4.   Cassuto, Leonard (2000). Oliver Sacks: the P.T. Barnum of the Postmodern World?, American Quarterly, 52.2, 326-333. Available in Project Muse at http://remote.slc.edu:2075/journals/american_quarterly/v052/52.2cassuto.pdf

5. Couser, G. Thomas (2001). The Cases of Oliver Sacks: The Ethics of Neuroanthropology. Available online at http://poynter.indiana.edu/publications/m-couser.pdf

 

Week 14 (A): May 6th: Conference Presentations

 

Week 15 (B): May 13th: Conference Presentations