December 12, 2005
Clinical neuropsychology takes to the stage:
Neuropsychologist Paul Broks' exploration of how brain injury affects selfhood, Into The Silent Land, has been made into a play that is currently showing in the Soho Theatre in London's West End.
The production is entitled On Ego and asks the question:
"What are we? Skin, bone and a hundred billion brain cells? Or is there something more? How does the conscious "you" clamber from the numb darkness of the brain box out into a world of people and places, pleasure and pain, love and loss?"
Interestingly, this isn't the first time that a book of case studies of brain injured patients has been turned into a theatre production, as Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was turned into an opera.
On Ego finishes on the 7th January.
Link to information on play.
Link to Observer article about On Ego
Link to American Scientist interview with Broks.
