Fresh Air, Todd Feinberg and Tom Fontana

By: Terry Gross

Narrated by: Terry Gross

Psychiatrist and neurologist Todd Feinberg and writer Tom Fontana on this archive edition of Fresh Air. Todd Feinberg's new book is called Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self. What is the self? and what is the relationship between the brain and selfhood? Feinberg uses the stories and interesting cases of his patients to try and answer these questions from a neurological and psychological standpoint. Feinberg claims that the way patients with brain damage or disorders like "alien hand syndrome" talk about themselves can tell us a lot about how the brain "creates" itself. Dr. Feinberg is associate professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Chief of the Betty and Morton Yarmon Division of Neurobehavior and Alzheimer's Disease at the Beth Israel Medical Center of New York. Executive producer and writer, Tom Fontana of HBO's Oz, the realistic drama about life in an experimental unit of a maximum security prison. Fontana also created Homicide: Life on the Street and the 1980s drama set in a city hospital, St. Elsewhere. (Original Broadcast Date: January 30, 2001)

Want more Fresh Air?

Get the latest issue.

Check out the complete archive.

(P) and ©2001 WHYY-FM