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After the breakthrough with phantom limbs, Ramachandran did something that very few scientists attempt: he changed discipline, leaving visual perception for neurology. He is now professor in the psychology department and neurosciences programme at the University of California, San Diego.
The paradigm shift in neurology in recent years has been the adoption of a more flexible model of how the brain works. It used to be thought that there was a series of zones that governed separate hard-wired functions. But Ramachandran has helped revise that view. In the 90s, he conducted brain-imaging experiments that clearly demonstrated that damaged brains are able to transfer functions to healthy sections of the brain and, in so doing, reorganise the sensory map.
Neuroplasticity, as it's called, gives us a much more acute understanding of how the brain works, but it doesn't bring us a great deal closer to the ghost in the machine: consciousness. Many scientists believe the sensory map imprinted on the brain forms a rudimentary consciousness, and the next stage of development is "mirror neurons", which enable us to ape the actions of others.