The Island of the Colorblind is a book by neurologist Oliver Sacks about achromatopsia on the Micronesian atoll of Pingelap. The second half of the book is devoted to the mystery of Lytico-Bodig disease in Guam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Colorblind Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE (born 9 July 1933) is a British-American neurologist, writer, and amateur chemist who is Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine. Between 2007 and 2012, he was professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also held the position of "Columbia Artist". Before that, he spent many years on the clinical faculty of Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also holds the position of visiting professor at the United Kingdom's University of Warwick.[1] Sacks is the author of numerous best-selling books,[2] including several collections of case studies of people with neurological disorders. His 1973 book Awakenings was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name in 1990 starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. He and his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain were the subject of "Musical Minds", an episode of the PBS series Nova. Beginning in 1970, Sacks wrote of his experience with neurological patients. His books have been translated into over 25 languages. In addition to his books, Sacks is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, as well as other medical, scientific, and general publications.[13][14][15] He was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science in 2001.[16] Sacks' work has been featured in a "broader range of media than those of any other contemporary medical author"[17] and in 1990, The New York Times said he "has become a kind of poet laureate of contemporary medicine".[18] His descriptions of people coping with and adapting to neurological conditions or injuries often illuminate the ways in which the normal brain deals with perception, memory and individuality. Sacks considers that his literary style grows out of the tradition of 19th-century "clinical anecdotes," a literary style that included detailed narrative case histories. He also counts among his inspirations the case histories of the Russian neuropsychologist A. R. Luria.[19] Sacks describes his cases with a wealth of narrative detail, concentrating on the experiences of the patient (in the case of his A Leg to Stand On, the patient was himself). The patients he describes are often able to adapt to their situation in different ways despite the fact that their neurological conditions are usually considered incurable.[20] His most famous book, Awakenings, upon which the 1990 feature film of the same name is based, describes his experiences using the new drug L-Dopa on Beth Abraham post-encephalitic patients.[9] Awakenings was also the subject of the first documentary made (in 1974) for the British television series Discovery. In his other books, he describes cases of Tourette syndrome and various effects of Parkinson's disease. The title article of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is about a man with visual agnosia[21] and was the subject of a 1986 opera by Michael Nyman. The title article of An Anthropologist on Mars, which won a Polk Award for magazine reporting, is about Temple Grandin, an autistic professor. Seeing Voices, Sacks' 1989 book, covers a variety of topics in deaf studies. In his book The Island of the Colorblind Sacks writes about an island where many people have achromatopsia (total colorblindness, very low visual acuity and high photophobia), and describes the Chamorro people of Guam, who have a high incidence of a neurodegenerative disease known as Lytico-Bodig disease (a devastating combination of ALS, dementia, and parkinsonism). Along with Paul Alan Cox, Sacks has published papers suggesting a possible environmental cause for the cluster, namely the toxin beta-methylamino L-alanine (BMAA) from the cycad nut accumulating by biomagnification in the flying fox bat.[22][23] In November 2012 Oliver Sacks released his latest book, Hallucinations. In this work Sacks takes a look into why ordinary people can sometimes experience hallucinations and removes the stigma placed behind the word. He explains, "Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness or injury.".[24] Sacks writes about the not so well known phenomenon called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, which has been found to occur in elderly people who have lost their eyesight. The book has been described by Entertainment Weekly as, "Elegant… An absorbing plunge into a mystery of the mind," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks

• published: 08 Nov 2014
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