Brain cells, when bored, make stuff up

Robert Krulwich of NPR has done three fascinating reports about what brain cells do when they are bored. Two are interviews with Dr. Oliver Sacks. A woman came to him because, it turned out, the part of her brain that was made to process sound got bored after she went deaf, and it started spitting out music. Dr. Sacks is, as always, an excellent storyteller, and you can listen to this interview here. Another woman had songs going through her head all the time, as many of us do. Her problem was that hers were loud enough to drown out conversations and other sounds around her. You can listen to or read her story here. The third program (listen or read here) features a man who suffered from the visual equivalent of the bored-brain-cell phenomenon. After he went blind, his visual cortex started producing rather odd hallucinations. I'd generally recommend Mr. Krulwich's reports, which are usually between five and ten minutes long and can be had as a podcast, called Hmmmm. . . , and these three stories will give you a good first taste of his style, if not of his normally much wider range of science topics.