Thanks to you

Thanksgiving is here, and we are thankful for your support, your comments, and your emails and letters. In particular, as Dr. Sacks finishes up the manuscript for his book on hallucinations, we are very grateful to all who have written to him about their own experiences with hallucinations (and everything else). Thank you!!

We are also grateful for the power of music. Last week, ABC’s Nightline aired this special on Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s incredible progress using melodic intonation therapy to regain speech after a bullet passed through the left side of her brain, causing her to lose expressive speech. Her journey has been deeply inspiring, and we’d like to take this opportunity to salute music therapists, speech therapists, occupational and physical therapists, too. These dedicated professionals know all about brain plasticity and are devoted to helping the rest of us utilize it. Saludos!

We give thanks, always, for books and book people. What’s Dr. Sacks reading these days? He has been returning to a perennial favorite, William James’s Principles of Psychology (his edition is so well-thumbed its cover has long since worn away). He has been excited by a new book on dolphin intelligence–biologist Diana Reiss’s The Dolphin in the Mirror, and one on the conquest of Mount Everest–Wade Davis’s Into the Silence. And he is looking forward to reading Eugenia Bone’s Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms—not only to learn more about hallucinations, but because mushrooms are some of the coolest and most overlooked members of the botanical world (well, at least they used to be plants, before scientists figured out that they weren’t…).