The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind : My Tale Of Madness And Recovery Barbara K Lipska With Elaine Mcardleresource Informationthe Item The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind : My Tale Of Madness And Recovery Barbara K Lipska With Elaine Mcardle Represents A Specific Individual Material Embodiment Of A Distinct Intellectual Or Artistic Creation Found In Anaheim Public Librarythis Item Is Available To Borrow From 1 Library Branch
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- “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”–
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The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: A Journey To The Brink And Back
Published on in In the Community, Clinical Trials
Guest Author: Adam Hayden, Guest Author
National Brain Tumor Society Advocate and GBM patient, Adam Hayden, talks hope, clinical trials, and survivorship with neuroscientist and author Barbara Lipska. The following has been edited for length, format, and clarity.
‘i Was A Monster’: Mental Health Scientist Who Beat Stage 4 Cancer Describes Shock At Failing To Recognize Her Own Delusions Brought On By The Treatment That Saved Her Life
Three years ago, Dr Barbara Lipska was probably going to die, but more importantly, she was convinced that the pizza place nearby was trying to rip off and sicken its customers by lacing their pies with plastic.
On a recent night at New Yorks Rubin Museum of Art, neuroscientist Barbara Lipska, Ph.D., sat down with journalist Jake Halpern as part of the museums annual Brainwave series. The discussion gave audience members the unique opportunity to hear a lucid perspective of what its like to experience psychosis.
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Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and RecoveryBarbara K. Lipski, Elaine McArdle, 2018Houghton Mifflin HarcourtISBN-13: 9781328787309SummaryAs a deadly cancer spread inside her brain, leading neuroscientist Barbara Lipska was plunged into madnessonly to miraculously survive with her memories intact.In the tradition of My Stroke of Insight and Brain on Fire, this powerful memoir recounts Lipska’s ordeal and explains its unforgettable lessons about the brain and mind.In January 2015, Lipskaa leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illnesswas 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.
National Brain Tumor Society
Barbara Lipska, PhD, director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health part of the National Institutes of Health and author of the recently published memoir, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery, notes her fantastic medical team, devoted family, and stubborn optimism as important tools for treatment and recovery from metastatic brain cancer.
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Be Prepared To Feel Insane
After all, Emma Powell narrates this with such brilliance that you will writhe and cringe as Lipska navigates her newly unsound world, her deeply unsound mind and traumatized brain. She seethes, she snipes, she shrieks at times at those who love her and see only that she has become the worst version of herself. They have no idea it’s because the part of her brain that controls empathy, controls impulses, has been damaged by tumors. Lipska is frustrated by sounds that are interpreted as too loud and shrill, an environment which should be familiar has no discernible landmarks she can use, people who don’t seem to understand that by God, she has been incredibly wronged by a train running late. She has no idea that one shouldn’t urinate on oneself in public, or otherwise one shouldn’t jog miles and miles with the gore of hair dye running down ones face. The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind gives a vividly drawn, perfectly imaged glimpse into what it’s like to be the person with dementia, the person who is schizophrenic. And even, while she’s on massive doses of steroids to control the swelling of her brain, the person in the grip of a manic psychotic break. It’s a listen I won’t be forgetting any time soon. And a family member with Alzheimer’s? I’ll be looking at her, treating the crises that arise with such an illness, in a far different manner…
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Inews The Essential Daily Briefing
‘The neuroscientist who lost her mind’She was sitting at her desk at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland where she has spent many years studying the brain, in particular the effects of schizophrenia when she noticed that her right arm seemed to disappear from her line of vision entirely whenever it strayed to the right-hand corner of her computer keyboard.
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Treatment Trials And Quality Of Life
Lipskas brain cancer melanoma that spread, or metastasized, to the brain presented at one time with as many as 18 small tumors concentrated in her prefrontal cortex, the seat of personality regulation, among other vital functions. The tumors were first found in 2015, after a sudden episode in which, while working at her computer, her right hand suddenly disappeared from her perception.
After initial surgery, her treatment consisted of, first, targeted radiotherapy aimed at damaging the small tumors before her treating physician administered an immunotherapy agent to help her bodys immune system seek and destroy the damaged and vulnerable tumor cells. The immunotherapy protocol was available to Lipska through her enrollment in a clinical trial.
In her book, Lipska pays particular attention to the disturbances in her personality driven by inflammation as a consequence of the tumors and treatment changes she didnt even realize were happening to her until the inflammation began to subside and her brain started trending toward normal functionality.
I was sure that everyone around me was acting wrongly. I thought they were conspiring against me, being mean. The most awful thing was that I hurt the people I love. As I regained my sanity, started coming back to life, I saw that I had no insight into my behaviour, I couldnt recall the emotions.
Attribution: Dr. Lipska, The Guardian newspaper interview
Survivorship & Combating Stigma
Lipska struggles with the ambiguity of survivorship. Even with the label, survivor, she isnt sure it is the correct term. Our conversation reflects the tone set in the Epilogue of her book: is it possible that those with tumors exhibiting high recurrence rates may never be survivors? Lipska displays careful and thoughtful consideration of these weighty issues that threaten the core of our relationships to our own bodieswill the cancer return? Will my body betray me? Dr. Lipska fears a return of, a caricature of , affected by recurrent tumors invading and swelling in the complex networks of the brain, returning her to the brink of madness.
An attitude eerily similar to my own, and many others I meet with brain tumors and cancers of the central nervous system, we fear most for our families who are left with, a deep, dark hole an empty hole: black and grim, following our deaths. Dr. Lipska decided to fill this hole preemptively with images, books, and memories with her husband, children, and grandchildren.
Lipska and I shared sighs and grunts, nonverbal signals mysteriously transmitted by telephone, to share a space of mutual understanding. We have permission to allow ourselves to enter this space because we are anchored by Lipskas commitment to optimism.
People should never feel guilty that they are sick.
Attribution: Dr. Lipska
The Interviewer
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An Inspiring Story But Nothing New
I would like to prelude my review by saying that I was happy Dr. Lipska was able to survive the melanoma, keep the career that she loves, and still participate in athletic competitions.This being said, I felt that her comments on her experiences were incomplete and did not reveal anything that others haven’t said before. For an example, she claims that her experience has heightened her empathy with other neurodivergent people, but never elaborates with real world examples/interactions.In fact, she spends the majority of the book talking about her family and exercise hobbies and these eclipse the “madness” almost completely.The highlight for me was Emma Powell’s narration. Her pitch and expressiveness kept me listening even when I lost interest in the content.
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The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale Of Madness And Recovery
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.”
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We Have Nothing To Lose By Being Optimistic
Lipska displays a robust optimism indicative of her strong-willed and competitive personality, referring to her cancer experience as a bump in the road, with a sense of blase unflappability. In our conversation, she made clear her desire to bring hope to others. Drawing from my experience with scientists and researchers, a population that is often guarded about hope and optimism in favor of evidence and conditional probabilities, I sensed there may be more beneath the surface. I asked Dr. Lipska more pointedly if bringing hope was a primary reason for her writing.
Yes! She affirmed, but not false hope. Leaving time for a reflective pause, Dr. Lipska punctuated her sentiment, we have nothing to lose by being optimistic. Dr. Lipska remarked that science is evolving so quickly that diseases we once thought of having no treatment options are now manageable, and in some cases, curable.
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind
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AS the director of the human brain bank at the National Institute of Mental Health, I am surrounded by brains, some floating in jars of formalin and others icebound in freezers. As part of my work, I cut these brains into tiny pieces and study their molecular and genetic structure. My specialty is schizophrenia, a devastating disease that often makes it difficult for the patient to discern what is real and what is not. I examine the brains of people with schizophrenia whose suffering was so acute that they committed suicide. I had always done my work with great passion, but I dont think I really understood what was at stake until my own brain stopped working.
In the first days of 2015, I was sitting at my desk when something freakish happened. I extended my arm to turn on the computer, and to my astonishment realized that my right hand disappeared when I moved it to the right lower quadrant of the keyboard. I tried again, and the same thing happened: The hand disappeared completely as if it were cut off at the wrist. It felt like a magic trick mesmerizing, and totally inexplicable. Stricken with fear, I kept trying to find my right hand, but it was gone.
Strangely, I wasnt worried. Like so many patients with mental illness, whose brains I had studied for a lifetime, I was losing my grasp on reality.
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Npr Weekend Edition Saturday
‘The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind’ Returns From MadnessOne spring morning in 2015, Barbara Lipska got up as usual, dyed her hair and went for a jog in her suburban Virginia neighborhood.But when she returned from a much longer than expected run, her husband Mirek was completely taken aback.
