![]() ![]() While the tendency to think of neurological disorders as deficits of some kind can be useful, it creates major weaknesses in the discipline of neurology. ![]() One reason that neurologists prefer to discuss diseases as deficits, Sacks argues, is that deficits in parts of the brain are easier to identify indeed, neurology arose from scientists’ attempts to trace strange behaviors to deficits in specific areas of the brain. For example, aphasia, the inability to speak in words, can be defined as a deficit in Broca’s area, the region of the brain that controls speech. For example, in the first part of the book, Sacks discusses the strong tendency for neurologists to conceive of disorders as kinds of absences, or deficits. In a sense, the question of how one should conceptualize mental illness is not itself a neurological question, and, as Sacks shows, scientists’ paradigms (frameworks of agreed-upon assumptions) for mental illnesses are often determined by prejudice, tradition, or convenience, rather than rigorous science. In addition to describing the practice of neurology, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat studies some of the different ways of conceiving of neurological disorders. ![]()
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