Our guest on ST Medical Monday is Dr. Barbara Lipska, Director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she studies mental illness and human brain development. She joins us to discuss her engaging and disturbing new memoir, "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery." As noted of this book by Kirkus Reviews: "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.... The resulting grueling two-month ordeal battling debilitating mental problems forms the core of this intensive memoir.... 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."
"The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery"
