Bizarre: The Most Peculiar Cases of Human Behavior and What They Tell Us about How the Brain Works

Book Review 

Title: Bizarre: The Most Peculiar Cases of Human Behavior and What They Tell Us About How the Brain Works by Marc Dingman 

Genre: Non-Fiction, Science, Medical 

Rating: 4 Stars 

This book focuses solely on the mind and human behaviour which has always fascinated especially when it comes mental disorders and mental illness since I suffer with them myself and this didn’t disappoint. The book itself is split into twelve sections that focuses on different aspect of human behaviour and what the mind does with these different disorders. The first section which focuses on disorders revolving around identification which was fascinating to read about. 

As mentioned, the first part focuses on identification disorders and for many the first that might come to mind is face blindness which is mentioned within the book but two stand out to me in this first section for being both rare and unusual in their presentation. The first of these is Cotard’s Syndrome, which is a condition where the person afflicted genuinely believes they are dead. This has many different presentations, and these range from believing that they have died, and their body is being possessed by some other entity to believing that they have died, and their body is actively rotting while they are trapped inside. Now, while this might sound like the plot to a bad B movie, it is entirely real and the way the mind processes this information and makes the person believe they aren’t alive anymore was fascinating as it can range from trauma like an accident which causes the mind to make this assumption to many other causes. The second is Capgras Syndrome which is a form of imposter syndrome where people afflicted believe that the people around them even their closest loved ones have been replaced by imposters. These people believe that their friends and family have been replaced by people that look and act like the originals but when asked what seems different about them to lead them to this conclusion, nothing can be pinpointed. Again, this disorder can be caused by several different factors, but the mind remains intact outside of this one belief and many afflicted will continue to live with these people even though they believe they aren’t the same people.  

The next section which was particularly interesting to me was the section on physicality. These disorders relate to ways in which the mind makes the person believe that something is different about their body. One such disorder is clinical lycanthropy, now many will be familiar with the term of lycanthropy as it refers to werewolves in fiction but in medicine, it refers to people who believe that they have the body of an animal and act accordingly. In some cases, this can mean something as simple as consuming food related to that animal and can progress to the afflicted finding themselves attracted to the same species, they believe they are which can get complication and controversial at times. This is exceedingly rare which only around 50 known cases worldwide but provides an eye-opening insight into the strange ways the mind can bend itself without our knowledge or consent. Another condition mentioned in this chapter is phantom limb syndrome which many will be familiar with. Phantom limb syndrome is explained relatively easily but it can be distressing for those involved. It tends to affect those that have had limbs amputated and it is the physical sensation of the limb still being present as the mind hasn’t adjusted to the loss of the limb. For some this can just be the feeling that the limb is still there when it isn’t but other can suffer severe pain from the phantom limb which can’t be abated through regular means because the limb no longer exists, but the mind believes it does.  

The last section I will discuss is the one of exceptionalism, which was one of the most interesting by far, in my opinion. This looks at disorders of the mind that cause exceptional abilities in those afflicted. This disorder is known as agenesis of the corpus callosum, meaning this vital collection of nerves is completely missing from the brain of the person afflicted. While this might seem like a drawback, and it can be but in some it can heighten or enhance parts of the mind. In one case, a child born with a low IQ had this condition and it results in them have insane abilities to memorize and remember huge quantities of information which they could recall on command. They also had the ability to pinpoint dates, meaning when asked what day of the week a given date fell on, they could make the calculation in second and was correct almost all the time. However, the reason this disorder is mentioned is because scientists and doctors have been unable to explain why the missing nerves can cause these exceptional abilities in some and yet be debilitating in others. One theory is that in the people who have these abilities the mind has essentially rewired itself to account for the missing nerve which are vital for communication between the two hemispheres of the brain and it is this rewiring that allows the abilities to come to light.  

Overall, this book was a wild ride that delves deep into what these disorders are, how they are caused if it is known and theorizes on possible causes if it’s not. Looking so deep into the mind was astounding since a lot is still unknown about the mind and how it works especially in how it adjusts to injury or illness. Having seen with my own eyes how illnesses like tumor and cancer can affect the minds of people afflicted and how it can drastically change their behaviour, seeing the reasons why laid out makes the transition less drastic. If you are remotely interesting the psychological or medical aspects of the mind then definitely pick this book up.