Real Men Read – The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, by Barbara K. Lipska, Ph.D.

Thursday, November 21, 2019
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

NOTE: This month’s meeting is one week earlier than normal due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

As a deadly cancer spread inside her brain, leading neuroscientist Barbara Lipska was plunged into madness—only to miraculously survive with her memories intact. In the tradition of My Stroke of Insight and Brain on Fire, this powerful memoir recounts her ordeal and explains its unforgettable lessons about the brain and mind.

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.

Real Men Read is an open forum book discussion covering nonfiction books and fiction books that appeal to men…and even some women.  Our tradition in Real Men Read is to stick with books that have a colon in the title, even if it’s fiction. All are invited! Discussions are generally on the fourth Thursday of each month unless otherwise noted. To have a book set aside for you, contact Dave Anderson at 859-781-6166.

Cold Spring Branch