Neurologist Oliver Sacks, who often used his patients' brain conditions to consider larger truths about human consciousness, passed away from cancer at the age of 82 Sunday. Sacks helped introduce conditions like Tourette's and Asperger's to the general public and emphasized the characters of his patients in his writing. Sacks first gained notoriety with his 1973 book "Awakenings" about patients with encephalitis in the Bronx. He used the drug L-dopa to treat them and wrote about the findings.
