The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery

by Barbara K. Lipska, Elaine McArdle Narrated by Emma Powell

Overview

In January 2015, Barbara Lipska—a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness—was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia—and schizophrenia—like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, just as her doctors figured out what was happening, the immunotherapy they had prescribed began to work. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.

In The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, Lipska describes her extraordinary ordeal and its lessons about the mind and brain. She explains how mental illness, brain injury, and age can change our behavior, personality, cognition, and memory. She tells what it is like to experience these changes firsthand. And she reveals what parts of us remain, even when so much else is gone.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/26/2018
In a terrifying moment one morning in January 2015, neuroscientist Lipska lost sight of her right-hand while she was eating breakfast. As she reveals in this fast-paced memoir, her symptoms eventually lead her doctors to discover that a melanoma had spread to her brain. Although she studied brain disorders for a living, she was afraid to look at the first MRIs of her own brain, admitting that her brain was a “mortal danger” to her. Following surgery to remove the small malignant tumor that caused vision loss, Lipska, hopeful she could return to normal life, began an intensely active physical regimen of cycling and running. Within a few weeks, however, she experienced dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms, exhibiting aggressive behavior, caused by what she would learn were lesions in her brain. Lipska shares excruciating details of the drug therapies and other treatments she underwent, such as radiation and taking immunotherapy drugs. She recognizes that she will never be the same and that she must deal with brain scans and other tests the rest of her life, but she revels in the pleasures of living every day with her family. Her exhilarating memoir reveals the frustrations of slow recovery, and that even with the best medical care there are no guarantees for good health. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

An iBooks Favorites selection for April  Included in the Top Ten of Publishers Weekly's "Spring 2018 Announcements: Memoirs and Biographies"  “A harrowing, intimately candid survivor's journey.” — Kirkus Reviews “Oliver Sacks meets When Breath Becomes Air in this fascinating, page-turning account of insanity. Barbara Lipska's remarkable story illuminates the many mysteries of our fragile yet resilient brains, and her harrowing journey and astonishing recovery show us that nothing is impossible.” — Lisa Genova, New York Times best-selling author of Still Alice and Every Note Played "A riveting science story about how brains go bad, interwoven with the remarkable personal story of one brain going spectacularly bad. A total nail-biter." — Lisa Sanders, New York Times best-selling author of Every Patient Tells a Story “A spellbinding investigation into the mysteries of the human brain, led by a scientist whose tenacity is as remarkable as her story.” — Amanda Ripley, New York Times best-selling author of The Smartest Kids in the World and The Unthinkable “A superb memoir from a highly respected neuroscientist who is uniquely qualified to describe her titanic battle against malignant melanoma of the brain. Barbara Lipska clearly believes in those miracles that can be achieved through medical science, and also has an iron resolve to survive. Both qualities underpin this remarkable account of sanity lost and regained.” — Frank Vertosick, author of When the Air Hits Your Brain "An extraordinary chronicle. Barbara Lipska's story is inspiring and painful, but most of all it is a tribute to the human spirit told with the insight of a scientist and the love of a truly compassionate soul. I was hooked from the first page and could not put this down until the final sentence." — Thomas Insel, cofounder and president of Mindstrong Health and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health "In this fascinating book, a neuroscientist describes the terrifying symptoms she suffered as a result of multiple brain tumors. We learn about how the brain can produce bizarre and bewildering symptoms from the point of view of someone who has personal experience of aspects of the mental illnesses that she spends her life studying. The book is compelling and powerful, and hard to put down." — Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor of cognitive neuroscience, University College London "Diving inside some of the deepest mysteries of the human mind with someone who has spent her life studying exactly that, Barbara K. Lipska’s The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind describes the leading neuroscientist’s own descent into madness—triggered by an aggressive cancer that spread to her brain, miraculously retreated just months later, and left Lipska not only with her memories intact, but with a whole lot more insight (and even more questions) into the human brain." — Bustle, "14 Debut Books by Women Coming Out in 2018 That You Need in Your TBR Pile" —

Library Journal - Audio

05/15/2018
When Lipska, a renowned brain scientist and triathlete, feared something was seriously wrong when she noticed part of her visual field had disappeared. A high-achieving Polish immigrant with a loving, supportive family, she had survived breast cancer and a previous bout of melanoma. When an MRI revealed brain tumors caused by metastatic melanoma, she was treated with surgery and radiation, then immunotherapy. After two months, though, the tumors multiplied, and her brain swelled dangerously, causing her to experience some of the same symptoms of dementia and schizophrenia as the people whose brains she had studied. She raged at her family, lost her inhibitions, and got lost while walking in her neighborhood. After beginning targeted therapy, she miraculously started to become herself again. In explicit, yet approachable language, Lipska explains what happened to her brain. Unfortunately, Emma Powell's narration, while clear and upbeat, doesn't feel quite authentic. VERDICT This touchingly candid account of personal resilience throughout a devastating diagnosis and treatment will appeal to memoir enthusiasts and listeners interested in how the brain functions. ["Readers who enjoyed Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight and Susannah Callahan's Brain on Fire will find this memoir of interest": LJ 4/15/18 review of the Houghton Harcourt hc.]—Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

Kirkus Reviews

2018-01-28
A vibrant mental health expert's bout with brain cancer and the revolutionary treatments that saved her life.In 2015, Lipska, a veteran neuroscientist and triathlete who studies brains at the National Institute of Mental Health, found herself in a panic while out jogging in her suburban Virginia neighborhood. Without warning, she suddenly didn't recognize her surroundings and became severely disoriented. Her confusion dissipated, and then she received a devastating diagnosis of metastatic melanoma in her brain emerged. The resulting grueling two-month ordeal battling debilitating mental problems forms the core of this intensive memoir. The author briefly sketches the details of her history as a young, ambitious research scientist in Poland who eventually moved her family to America to pursue the study of brain illnesses and schizophrenia. In 2009, she underwent a mastectomy after a breast cancer diagnosis. In frank, unfettered prose, Lipska clearly demonstrates her courage, resilience, and pure dread in the face of disease and adversity. Of the three tumors found in her brain, one particularly "nasty raisin," vexingly located in the folds of her visual cortex," was bleeding. Though excised immediately, the author's mental acuity deteriorated. Through urgent and vigorous passages, the author chronicles a valiant fight for her life, with radiation treatments and an immunotherapy trial, which caused a whole new subset of medical maladies. Toward the end of the treatment plan, her behavior went haywire, and she suffered cognitive impairment, rage, paranoia, and bafflement, all of which crowded out any semblance of rationality. Eventually, however, the treatments worked, and Lipska experienced a miraculous (and statistically rare) "second chance at sanity." Throughout it all, the sheer irony of her ordeal never escaped her: "I am living through some of the processes of a disease that I've spent my life studying and trying to cure."A harrowing, intimately candid survivor's journey through the minefields of cancer treatment.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169980738
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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