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    The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
    The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
    The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
    Audiobook6 hours

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

    Written by Barbara K. Lipska and Elaine McArdle

    Narrated by Emma Powell

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateApr 3, 2018
    ISBN9781684412679
    Author

    Barbara K. Lipska

    BARBARA K. LIPSKA, Ph.D., is director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she studies mental illness and human brain development. A native of Poland, she holds a Ph.D. in medical sciences from the Medical School of Warsaw, and is an internationally recognized leader in human postmortem research and animal modeling of schizophrenia. Before emigrating from Poland to the United States, Dr. Lipska was a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw. She has been at NIMH since 1989 and has published over 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals. A marathon runner and a triathlete, she lives with her husband, Mirek Gorski, in Virginia.

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    Reviews for The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind

    4/5

    114 ratings13 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Joni Mitchell’s line, “I’ve looked at life from both sides now” comes to mind as I think of the author’s battles with metastases. A Type A personality with great affinity for the brain and all its intricacies, Lipska is assaulted by a form of brain cancer that alters her own brain significantly, with dramatic effects on her personality. Yet she is able to convey both the emotional & physical challenges in such a way that we are given a glimpse into the mind, emotions and fears of the patient with a compromised brain- whether they have brain tumors, Altzheimer’s or another illness.
      It’s a great reminder that no matter how someone acts, we may not know what they’re actually dealing with at the time.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic read! Educational and real. ? What a powerful way to share a devastating experience in order to help others.
    • 5/5
      In "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind," Dr. Barbara K. Lipska, who since 1989 has worked at the National Institute of Mental Health, recounts what happened in 2015 when tests showed that rogue cells from her previous bout with melanoma metastasized to her brain. As a result, for approximately two months, she behaved erratically; was irritable with both strangers and loved ones; suffered from a loss of memory and spatial recognition; and was unaware that she was no longer the loving and warm person whom her husband and children cherished.

      With the able assistance of writer and journalist Elaine McArdle, Dr. Lipska, who has a PhD that she received in her native Warsaw, candidly and compellingly describes her ordeal. On one occasion, she went for a run without her prosthetic--she is a breast cancer survivor--and with hair dye running down her face (she left the house in the middle of putting in the dye). When she got home, her husband barely recognized his wife, and she was bewildered by his stunned reaction. There would other occasions when Lipska's outbursts put a damper on family gatherings; she became disoriented in previously familiar places; and did not grasp that she was seeing the world around her through a distorted lens.

      Lipska is a strong and courageous woman who admits that, even though she studies the brain at the NIMH, she was as clueless as a layman about what was happening to her. One of the author's themes is that we should show more compassion towards individuals who suffer from brain injuries and emotional disorders. After repeated surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy, Dr. Lipska is doing better, but she knows that everything can change in an instant. She poignantly states: "In the course of losing and regaining my sanity, I've come to identify with other people who have known mental illnesses firsthand." This is a gripping and terrifying work of non-fiction that proves how far we still have to go in our understanding of the human mind and body.
    • 2/5
      The book didn't feel that genuine.

      My inference from the book is as follows
      - a white woman in US
      - a white woman of power and position in US
      - woman with insurance
      - a woman with family members having medical background.

      The author is a priveleged woman living in US. Living in good society in good neighbourhood with good and supportive and educated family. A well qualified 'scientist ', who pathetic that one could not diagnose herself of neurological deterioration. Even when she herself is an expert and head of the department.

      Even as a neuroscientist she wrote that she downplays her deterioration of motor skill and sensory perception. For a laymen it would have been acceptable, but for a alleged scientist in same or parallel field it seemed ignorant on her part. (Either she is a bad scientist or doesn't have sufficient knowledge)

      I'm sorry to say that but her struggle doesn't resonate with me.

      Barbara, I think masked her own flustration, anxieties and anger as something psychological.

      It would have been credible if she would have diagnosed by a accredited doctor, but she never was.

      She self diagnosed herself. (Which we all know that's not her core competency, as she proved herself as a beaurocrat rather that a knowledgeable scientist)

      Finally, I think she is/was trying to fit / adjust as white US suburban wife/mom/grandmom/fitness freak was more toxic and may have been causal for her cancer.
    • 5/5
      Very informative about how the brain works. Author compares her brain tumor experience with mental illness and the similarities in behavior. I recommend this book for anyone dealing with cancer, brain trauma or mental illness
    • 3/5
      This was not the same inspirational cancer survival experience as "A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles: A True Story of Love, Science, and Cancer" by Mary Elizabeth Williams. The author, who studied brains at the National Institute of Mental Health, had a much less emotional style. She presented information about the brain and cancer which added to my enjoyment of the book, but I was not enthralled. It was amazing to hear how she continued exercising and working throughout her illness and treatment. However, I couldn't believe that her family didn't intervene at some stage.
    • 4/5
      I made short work of this one. Was totally absorbed in her story. I find anything to do with the mind fascinating. It can be our best friend or our worst enemy. Yet, so little is known about this miraculous organ, the control center of what makes us who we are. The author is the head of the NIH, studying the brains of those with mental deficits, among them schitzophrenia. She had besten cancer twice, was an avid marathon and triathlon partcipant, when she found out she had a melanoma that had spread to her brain. Despite the many years studying the brains, she didn't recognize her own symptoms, but she was in for the fight of her life.The impact on her family was costly. The disease making her a completely different person. This is her story, and it is written in a no nonscence but honest manner. Her descriptions of how the brain works, and how hers was not, was told in a way that was easy to understand. Her treatments and trials, informative. A very interesting, and quite in spring memoir.
    • 4/5
      Lately I've been thinking about how much I enjoy medical histories/thrillers/memoirs, and why don't I read them more often? So when I spied this at the library when I took the kids to stock up on books for summer, of course it went on the pile.And I did really enjoy this. Even as I was disturbed by it and its implications for free will and perceived reality. We are our brains, and if we cannot say or know when something is wrong with them, then how can we as individuals or as a society fix them? The implications are staggering and can go on forever -- should Lipska been allowed to make such profound decisions for herself when she was clearly not herself? But if she wasn't herself, who was she? And if she couldn't decide, who could?And what would be the chances for survival and recovery for someone who wasn't a neuroscientist, living near D.C. with doctors and medical physicists in her family? And how should we treat people who cannot process reality in the same way that we can?The questions that this book brings up are challenging and so very interesting. A fascinating story, well-told, even if I would have appreciated the timeline conveyed a little more clearly.
    • 3/5
      I found this book very engaging and was fascinated by such a first-person account of a brain injury. Very few people have this perspective!
    • 3/5
      A neuroscientist documents her battle with melanoma of the brain and the effects of the treatment. I took exception with her hiding the second opinion of her MRI prior to the immunotherapy as the second opinion showed she was NOT free of tumors. She did not tell the doctor so he would go ahead and begin treatment. I wonder if she would not have had the side effects had the previous tumors been irradiated. Interesting that she is still going with the effects of the radiation on her brain. I think her good health, her family support, and her purpose with work all help contribute to some of her current remission.
    • 4/5
      I started and finished The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind by Barbara K. Lipska. A totally engaging look at the mind and how disease and aging can alter who we are. Only slightly technical, but very insightful. The author personally fought cancer, but she is also an authority on schizophrenia and draws comparisons between what she went through and what other patients suffering from dementia and other mental diseases experience. Fascinating.
    • 4/5
      "The underlying causes of mental illness are rarely as clear as metastatic brain cancer. And yet I felt I understood for the first time what many of the patients I study go through — the fear and confusion of living in a world that doesn’t make sense; a world in which the past is forgotten and the future is utterly unpredictable."–Barbara K. Lipska, “The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind,” The New York Times, March 16, 2016.---Dr. Barbara K. Lipska, a neuroscientist and the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in early 2015. After surviving stage 3 breast cancer in 2009 and stage 1B melanoma in 2011, the cancer had returned and metastasized to her brain, first manifesting itself through changes in vision. To treat the tumors, Lipska underwent both radiation and immunotherapy in an attempt to eradicate the tumors from her brain. In The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery , Lipska recounts her descent into madness during the summer of 2015, as the tumors continued to affect her brain chemistry in adverse ways, with a stunning clarity that offers the reader a unique glimpse into the mind of someone with mental illness.The way in which the author presented her story felt more clinical than personal, which had the disservice of making the author seem distant and aloof – which is more than likely the direct result of a scientist writing about herself as a patient rather than on a more personal level. Although I get it, this often made it hard to relate to the author as she kept some degree of distance between herself and the reader.However, I did enjoy this book. I thought it was inspiring to read about Lipska’s resilience in the face of adversity: from moving to America from Poland, to beating both breast cancer and melanoma, and finally through her battle against the tumors in her brain and the subsequent loss of her mind and mental faculties. Through everything, she showed strength and drive, especially through her continuance working, exercising, and devotion to her family.If you’re interested in getting an overview of this book without reading it (though it only comes in at 208 pages), Lipska wrote an article detailing her experiences, which was published in March 2016 by The New York Times. If nothing else, I’d recommend reading this to learn about a remarkable woman who was able to face her challenges head-on and lived to see another day.Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an advanced copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      One day, Barbara Lipska, two time cancer survivor, doctor, and a researcher trying to discover physical markers of schizophrenia in the brain, puts a nice gloppy mass of henna on her hair, wraps it in plastic, and goes for a run. A very long run- we becomes disoriented and lost for quite a while. She returns with red dye running down her head and body, looking like a victim of a serious crime. Then she suddenly loses a quarter of her visual field. Despite being aware that this means something bad has happened in her brain, she thinks little of it. It’s only with urging from her family that she goes to the doctor. All she is worried about is getting ready for a conference where she’ll be presenting, and also getting some skiing time in. This is just the start of another battle with cancer, a return of her melanoma, this time in her brain. As the cancer spreads and proliferates, her cognitive problems become worse. Radiation brings no permanent solution to her cancer. As the author runs out of treatment options, she enrolls in a clinical trial of immunotherapy. Her cognitive difficulties get worse over the course of the four dose regimen, but she keeps the worst of it to herself. She feels that a lot of her problem is inflammation in her brain due to the immunotherapy, not the cancer itself. She manages to hide her problems enough to get the fourth and final dose, something she knows she wouldn’t be allowed to have if they know how much inflammation she has. If she has too much inflammation, the brain swelling will kill her. If she doesn’t get the final dose, the melanoma will do the job… fortunately, she wins her gamble. As the inflammation goes down and the tumors shrink away, she begins to remember all the strange things she went to while her brain was swollen and being pushed on by tumors. She realizes she has lived through a situation very like schizophrenia, proving that mental illness can be created by physical stresses on the brain. It’s interesting to read; Dr. Lipska relates the various cognitive issues she had to the parts of the brain that were inflamed or squeezed by tumors. The prose is a little choppy but readable. You don’t often read accounts of people who “lost their minds” and then were able to get them back. Four stars.