Neurologist/author Oliver Sacks gave keynote speech/ MIT Media Lab conf.

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/medialab-h20.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/medialab-h20.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Speaking diffidently, in the self-effacing style of a bookish don, Sacks described how Parkinson's patients, frozen into human statues, could be led into dancing and singing with the right stimuli. Perhaps, he speculated, the Media Lab will come up with a device that will provide the right stimulation. But "the most wonderful power resides in music," he said. Music "will facilitate movement and action in a Parkinsonian as nothing can." </p>

<p>"Sacks also spoke of "phantom limbs," a phenomenon in which amputees retain sensation in missing limbs. Once thought to be a "nostalgic construct like the memory of departed parents," such sensations represent the brain's ability to map out senses and motor skills, Sacks said. A famous pianist who lost his right arm could still create fingering on a new piece for students."</p>

<p>South African poet David Wright lost his hearing at age 9, but he didn't realize he was deaf because he would continue to hear phantom voices, Sacks said. "If they turned away, he couldn't hear them." In the blind, the sensory cortex of the brain becomes hypersensitive, producing experience or images that are "quasi visual," something the rest of us cannot imagine, he said. </p>

<p>Sacks turned from natural to artificial adaptations, describing how a grid of electrodes can be placed on the tongues of the blind and connected to a video camera."</p>

<p>I Just wanted to post a few typical things going on at MIT!!</p>