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Running head: THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND 1

Critical Review on Barbara K. Lipska's ‘The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of

Madness and Recovery’

Desiree Carnegie

St. Petersburg College

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Critical Review on Barbara K. Lipska's ‘The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind:

My Tale of Madness and Recovery’

In the Neuroscientist Who Loses Her Mind, Barbara Lipska recounts her encounter with

metastatic brain cancer. As a result, the book offers a chance for readers to promote a spirit of

solidarity with patients of similar diseases and to struggle against the persistent stigmatization of

mental illness. The evolution of Lipska as a scientist, patient, and personality discusses the

neurological foundations of psychological illness while elevating the concept of personal

identity. In the novel, Lipska utilizes her explicit knowledge of the relationship between the

intricate dynamics of brain and functional interactions to create realistic and actual scenarios and

personalities from her life together.

Lipska proficiently explains her entire ordeal as a patient of brain cancer by the

utilization of her neuroscientific knowledge, in combination with the research that she conducted

in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). She also creates a sensory experience for the

readers by developing scenarios and explicit information for the readers to feel, smell, and touch.

The book continues with an overview of the brain's working regions, highlighting their functions,

roles, and anatomical locations. It does so by pointing the nose, hairline, and top of the skull that

attributed the outer anatomical features of the reader and recognizable markers set on top of

concealed, intricate structures. She brilliantly incorporates these systems to illustrate the case that

"abnormal structure and operation of the brain" is a mental disease, but she discovers that

understanding of anatomy is no substitution for experience. “It is my suffering that truly taught

me how the brain works,” she ultimately concludes.

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The neurological symptoms of Lipska were not always sensory; her temperament also

changed. Her aggression was becoming more intense, her cynicism grew increasingly prominent,

and her instruction needed more immediacy: a scientist's characteristics, exacerbated by disease.

The book uses explicit details that make the readers experience her delayed retreat from reality,

bewildering the readers as to the time her version of the incident becomes inaccurate.

Lipska contrasts her perspective with those of her test animals in the novel. “It’s likely

that communication between my prefrontal cortex and my hippocampus is failing, which is

unpleasantly reminiscent of the prefrontal cortical connections I disrupted in rats to study

schizophrenia,” Eventually, Lipska decides that an untested immunotherapy procedure currently

in the early stages of trials is her best chance of survival. Lipska narrates anatomical and

Physiology changes her body goes through after the beginning of her immunotherapy. She retells

her the discomfort she felt from her bloated arms that were the result of her previous breast

surgery. She talks about her constant throbbing head and rashes that cover her whole body. These

aftereffects of the therapy brought her immense discomfort and pain. It became hard for her to

perform a simple task. She narrates her experience traveling in an Amtrak; she was going to meet

her daughter in New Haven. The Amtrak got stuck in the middle of the journey due to some

maintenance issues. This incident irked her to such a great degree that she could not stop

complaining about the journey throughout her visit. She was anxious and rude to her grandsons

and daughter. Barbara recounts her despondency and exasperation towards her family for their

lack of understanding. She wanted their sympathy and attention to the subject of the train

incidents. The journey instead of being restorative turned out to be intolerable.

In further chapters of her story, she narrates the neurological changes her body went

through during the immunotherapy. She relates feeling lost and empty and was unable to

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remember her mundane task. She lost the motivation to even perform her regular functions. She

retells the incident when she forgot the parking space of her car and was running in circles trying

to find it. She would forget closing the blinds, removing her dye, and even her disheveled

appearance. The word she used to describe her state of mind is ‘Inhibited’. Barbara’s story

portrays the struggles of a cancer patient. She wanted people to understand the perspective of

cancer patients and the effects of medication and treatment that can occur in their physical and

mental state. She wanted to create awareness and sympathy for those people who are daily

fighting with such a disease. She wants families to exhibit understanding and cooperativeness

towards these people, to help them pave their way through these hard times.

Barbara explains that cancer is not related to the mental state of a person. The

characteristics or disposition of a person should not be judged because of their behavior and

attitudes towards people in conditions like cancer can vary and are entirely the output of the

neurological changes happening inside the brain. As she writes in her memoir, Lipska's unique

experience transformed the way she feels about mental health and mental disorder. She was an

enthusiastic, driven, diligent scholar for much of her adult life, committed to her career, family,

and running marathons. Then she became a different person, not just someone she liked after she

had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2015 and started taking medications to cope with the

disease. "I have been entirely disinhibited.” In her book, she explains that the brain, which is

essentially a motor, is not a straightforward organ such as the heart. It is an organ in perpetual

change with billions of neurons and billions of connexions, changing with every experience and

interactions, extracting cultural identity, manifesting in our behavior, and running our shows. The

neuroscientist needs the public to realize that psychiatric disease, very normal and life-

threatening, is organ failure. She argues in her book that we still judge brain failures as if they

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are deficiencies of character, images on the value of an individual rather than the result of

biological phenomena gone wrong.

Barbara Lipska teaches us to be a survivor and to display compassion and courage in the

face of a situation like these. She deems herself a survivor because she has fought cancer and

came out healthy and strong. The amount of pain and trauma she had to face was beyond our

comprehension, but it should be the responsibility of the people around cancer patients to treat

them with respect. Moreover, she teaches cancer patients to never give up and keep fighting

because the result is always worth the effort.

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References

Lipska, B. K., & McArdle, E. (2018). The neuroscientist who lost her mind: my tale of madness

and recovery. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.