I agree. Free will has no physical basis, aside from being a persistent sensation that has been imparted to us through evolution. Just because we parceled it up into a philosophical dilemma doesn't give it special status over our other neural states, which we loosely categorize into emotions, thoughts, and senses.

See: THE NEUROLOGY OF SELF-AWARENESS By V.S. Ramachandran

I'm not really a prodigious reader, I go through reading "phases" where I read a lot, then nothing for a while. I read Ursula LeGuin's The Birthday of The World not too long ago, and am currently re-reading V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain, because it is so fascinating.

My favourite three books (I know no-one asked but I felt like telling ya ) are Carl Sagan's Contact, Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden, and Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Hooray for sci-fi!

Good tip, thanks. But I'm looking for something that will help me find if "Ramachandran" has been submitted yet. And that doesn't help if there's a spelling mistake in a posted video's title or tags.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'TED, Vilayanur Ramachandra, phantom limb, synesthesia, Capgras syndrome' to 'TED, Vilayanur Ramachandran, phantom limb, synesthesia, Capgras syndrome' - edited by oxdottir

there's an N at the end of VS Ramachandran.

I'd love to run into Ramachandran at a party. I bet he'd be great fun. I've seen this talk before on the sift I think, maybe not the same video, but the same content.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k

This is a clip of Vilayanur Ramachandran giving a TED Talk. It's not quite a replacement for your "Mirror Box - Phantom Limb" video, but it's the next best thing.

Ramachandran's book, Phantoms in the Brain, is an excellent read.

sorry to be a bit of a party pooper as I thoroughly respect dr ramachandran and his work - he is truly doing some great research. But... the mirror box to treat phantom limb pain isn't new, it's been around for decades - I've got a psychology text book from the 60s with it being used to treat this.
Equally, the "revelation" that pain might be just a mental construct... shock horror.. pain, like ANY sensation is ONLY a mental construct.

Ramachandran continues to impress