Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, MD, PhD, DSc, is Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, Professor with the Neurosciences Program and Psychology Department at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California.

Dr Ramachandran obtained an MD from Stanley Medical College in Chennai, India and a PhD from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, England, where he was elected a senior Rouse Ball Scholar.

Dr Ramachandran's early research was on visual perception, but he is best known for his work in neurology. He has received many honors and awards including a fellowship from All Souls College, Oxford; an honorary doctorate from Connecticut College in New London (USA); a Gold Medal from the Australian National University; the Ariens Kappers Medal from the Royal Nederlands Academy of Sciences for landmark contributions in neuroscience; and the presidential lecture award from the American Academy of Neurology. He presented the Decade of the Brain lecture (1995) at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. More recently, he gave the Inaugural Keynote lecture at the Decade of the Brain Conference at the National Institute of Mental Health at the Library of Congress, and a public lecture at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. He also gave the first Hans Lucas Teuber lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Rudel-Moses lecture at Columbia; the Dorcas Cumming (inaugural keynote) lecture at Cold Spring Harbor; the Raymond Adams lecture at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard; the Jonas Salk Memorial lecture, Salk Institute; and the keynote plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.

Dr Ramachandran is a trustee for the San Diego Museum of Art and has lectured widely on art, visual perception, and the brain.

He has published more than 120 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as three invited review articles in Scientific American. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Human Behaviour, the encyclopedia of the human brain. Dr Ramachandran is the author of the critically acclaimed book Phantoms in the Brain, now translated into eight languages; it formed the basis for a two-part series on Channel Four TV UK and a one-hour PBS special in the US. His work is featured frequently in major news media outlets including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Public Broadcasting Station (PBS). Newsweek recently named him a member of "the century club," one of the "hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century."

Dr Ramachandran has indicated that he will not include reference to off-label/unapproved uses of drugs or devices in his presentation.