Oliver Sacks: A Neurologist At The 'Intersection Of Fact And Fable'

Oliver Sacks: A Neurologist At The 'Intersection Of Fact And Fable' Enlarge this image toggle caption Chris McGrath/Getty Images Chris McGrath/Getty Images Neurologist Oliver Sacks, who died Sunday, once described himself as an "old Jewish atheist," but during the decades he spent studying the human brain, he sometimes found himself recording experiences that he likened to a godly cosmic force. "I was fascinated that one could have such perceptual changes, and also that they went with a certain feeling of significance, an almost numinous feeling," Sacks told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2012. So everything looked frozen, and then, very suddenly, sometimes one of these patients would be released from this state and would speak and move, then you could see what a vivid, alive, real person was there, imprisoned in a sort of way by some strange physiological change. There's obviously a very, very strong passionate feeling of love and loss with bereavement hallucinations, and I think intense emotion of any sort can produce a hallucination.. With hallucinations one remembers them, unlike dreams, and on the whole they're not like dreams because dreaming, you're asleep, you're only a dreaming consciousness, whereas here you're awake and observing yourself.