Oliver Sacks – deemed the ‘poet laureate of medicine’ by The New York Times – will speak at Campbell Hall tonight at 7:30.

UCSB’s Arts & Lectures, with support from the College of Creative Studies Distinguished Visiting Fellow Lecture Series, is presenting the writer-neurologist’s lecture on “Creativity and the Brain.” His discussion will focus on his most recent book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.

Through his writings, Sacks explores the relationship between neurology, the human mind and the body. A practicing neurologist, Sacks has drawn from his experiences as a doctor to create such highly acclaimed works as his best-selling books, Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In his narratives, Sacks describes his cases with a particular focus on how people cope with neurological conditions that include Tourette syndrome, autism, phantom limb syndrome and Alzheimer’s Disease.

In Musicophilia, Sacks connects the power of music to the individual experience and discusses how music has the power to both heal and harm. The book includes several interesting anecdotes, from Sacks’ coinage of the term “amusia” in relation to hyper-musical children to his documentation of people’s unusual encounters with music, such as a man whose information retention is only seven seconds for everything other than music.

Sacks writes regularly for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, as well as various medical journals. His honors include membership in the Guggenheim Fellowship and he is Commander of the Order of the British Empire, an honor bestowed to him by Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to medicine.

Tickets are $20 for the general public and $10 for students. A book signing will follow the event.