I really enjoyed this book. The process and reality of what happened with the neuroscientist was fascinating, intriguing and a bit frightening. Well written and engaging. Would definitely recommend the read, well worth it.

I absolutely loved this book and will highly and frequently recommend it to my customers! Thank you, NetGalley, for the advance copy!

This was such an interesting journey of a book. The synopsis had me interested, and I also read a small excerpt in advance of reading it thanks to Book Buzz that had me falling in love with the writing before beginning my read. It had some slow moments, but overall I was entranced and caught up in the story. Absolutely not something you read every day, this book really made me think.

An epic and inspiring tale of a neurologist's battle with cancer. This is a book you will not be able to put down.

I usually don't read these types of books, but after seeing the cover of this one and reading the synopsis, I knew I had to get my hands on it. The tale of Barbara Lipska and how cancer has affected her and her family was truly breathtaking. Dr. Lipska is a neurologist (she studies the brain), but as cancer started developing in her brain, her slow progression into madness shocked her whole family as the sweet and loving woman they knew turned into someone else. Her story is truly inspiring and will give hope to those going through similar problems.

The thing I loved most about this book, was the fact that Barbara not only told her story of what happened to her during her treatment, but she also informs the reader of how the brain works, the different parts of the brain and an amazing scientific background on to which parts of the brain are responsible for what. This story will not only teach you, but will also be captivating and aweinspiring.

I highly recommend this book to everyone, there is information for any age group and reading this book could help you and your loved ones to decipher early symptoms of brain cancer and how to deal with cancer as a family.

Lipska is a fit sixtyish survivor of breast cancer who is diagnosed with melanoma. When the tumors spread throughout her brain, she experiences mental illness symptoms such as confusion, irritability and other personality changes. A director at the NIMH, Lipska is well versed as a spokesperson for the brain as she receives a terminal diagnosis. Here is her story.

Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley

This book was kind of a load of crap. The author suffered from psychiatric symptoms due to tumors in her brain but calling this "mental illness" is a definite exaggeration . Her ego is amazingly large so I guess the tumors didn't affect all areas of the brain because damn, she bragged a lot about how fit she was, and how great a mother she was and on and on. As someone who actually does suffer from mental illness, while I appreciate the fact that she has compassion for us, her story just didn't resonate at all with me. What's worse is that like the author, I am an outlier in the mental illness community. My major depressive disorder developed from an outside reason, the loss of my wife, so I was treated differently than the average mentally ill person. Both the author and I were fortunate enough to only be truly ill for a short time. For her (or I) to use our experience as a guide for others is really just nonsense. I really was disappointed in this book.

Right up my alley and fascinating to boot, Barbara K. Lipska's The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery was a read that I couldn't put down.



Barbara was a prolific researcher on the neuro-origins of mental illness and the director of the brain bank at the National Institute of Mental Health. Her life's work served as the greatest irony when she began losing her mind in the prime of her life. At first she loses sight in the corners of her eye, and she knows -- it's a tumor. Her breast cancer metastasized to her brain, which was the ultimate cruelty. She has it treated and has confidence in her recovery, but she slowly changes from the loving, caring mother and wife that she has always been to someone she doesn't even understand. Her work can't save her.



You know me and brain stuff -- I love it. Can't keep my hands off of it, except for maybe when I read murder and mayhem. I was fascinated by Lipska's journey from researcher to the researched, and I found myself overwhelmed by her experience. I love that she opened the book with a particular point in her journey, when she found herself dying her hair and then going for a run, but not realizing she still had dye in her hair and then losing her place in her neighborhood. None of it phased her as she didn't even realize what was happening. It was fascinating to read, and then to jump into her journey from her beginnings in Poland and her journey to the United States. Her research was profound and an incredibly important contribution to the mental health field, and her description of her work at NIMH was amazing.



Then the worst happens, which is the growth of metastatic tumors on her brain. I felt her panic as she realized that she couldn't see out the side of her vision, and her I understood her denial of what was happening even as I was screaming to her that she needed to get to the doctor now. The devastation she felt at having to put her life on hold was acute to me, and her journey was arduous and palpable. I will say that her writing felt a bit stilted, but I chalk that up to a background in academic writing which doesn't particularly lend itself to writing for the masses. (I know this well, as I can be pedantic myself if I don't watch it. See? I just used the word pedantic unironically.) However, her story was so fascinating that I was willing to look past the sometimes awkward narrative voice to dig deep into the heart of the story.

Thank you Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Netgalley for an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

For me, if a book can make me continue to think about it days after I have finished reading it then it is a very good book. This is one of those books.

This is a very easy book to read, the medical aspects are written in an understandable way and the book flowed well enough to want to read it in a couple sittings. I did question how a family of medical professionals, including the patient, missed personality changes and came to the conclusion that if medically trained people can miss this clues, then there is less hope for those of us who are medically untrained !

The changes in the brain that occurred over a relatively short period of her illness were frightening but also fascinating for me to read about. The author admits she is a Type A personality but her vigour to succeed in every exercise goal she set herself, not to mention the abundant research she did to ensure she gave herself the best chance of continued, well functioning life, continued to astound me throughout the book. Even in the midst of potentially dying, continued bad prognosis and the advanced knowledge of what this prognosis means for her mind, she continued push through and do everything in her power, often against medical advice to give herself and her family hope.

This is a very brave person, who despite everything refused to be beaten.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this very honest, informative memoir. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in medical memoirs.

It is an absolutely spectacular insight into the workings of the human mind, that Barbara Lipska offers us here. How lucky she was that this was a temporary loss of conscious control comes through straight away; the descriptions she offers of just how normal everything could feel even as she slipped deeper and deeper into psychosis are absolutely chilling.

The human brain is an amazing, enigmatic thing. So seldom are we offered such a clear glimpse into the functioning of a brain gone wrong, because so seldom are people offered a chance to come back. Barbara's journey is kept readable in large part because she did make it back, but also in part because of some excellent writing.

An absolute must for anyone who finds the brain absolutely fascinating and neurological disorders even more so.

3.5 stars

Barbara Lipska was born, raised, and educated in Poland before she immigrated to the United States in 1989 to do post-doctoral studies at Maryland's 'National Institute of Mental Health' (NIMH). In 2013 Lipska became 'Director of the Human Brain Collection Core' at NIMH, which secures post-mortem brains for research about the brain and behavior.

Lipska's expertise helped her understand her symptoms when she developed metastatic brain cancer in 2015, at the age of 63. Lipska - who had previously been treated for breast cancer and melanoma (skin cancer) - realized something was wrong when she was preparing for 2015's 'Winter Conference on Brain Research' in Montana. Reaching out to turn on her computer, Lipska noticed that her hand 'disappeared' when she moved it to the right and 'reappeared' when she moved it to the left.

Lipska immediately thought 'brain tumor' - and an MRI confirmed her worst fears. The brain scan revealed three tumors in the scientist's head, one of which was bleeding.

Lipska is very fortunate to have a husband, Mirek, who's a cool-headed mathematician; a son, Witek, who's a neuroscientist; a daughter, Kasia, who's a physician; and a sister, Maria, who's a physicist and chief of therapy in the radiation oncology department at Boston's 'Brigham and Women's Hospital.' Lipska's family arranged for her to go to Brigham's, where the bleeding tumor was excised and the other tumors were treated with stereotactic radiosurgery - a procedure that focuses high doses of radiation onto individual tumors. Lipska was also given steroids, to reduce the swelling in her brain.

Within months after her surgery, Lipska felt good enough to go skiing with her family and to resume her regular triathlon training, which includes swimming, cycling, and running.

The scientist knew, however, that she wasn't cured, and that new tumors were likely to appear. Lipska decided that her best chance of survival lay with an experimental immunotherapy procedure, which primes the body's immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Lipska got into an immunotherapy clinical trial at Georgetown University Hospital, and was periodically infused with powerful antibody drugs over a period of months.

The treatment helped to shrink Lipska's tumors, but also (temporarily) damaged her brain, and the scientist's behavior changed dramatically. Lipska says, "I was changing very gradually, from a loving mother, grandmother and wife, into a kind of a heartless monster. I was yelling at my loving husband. I was yelling at my beloved grandsons and my children. I was behaving like a 2-year-old with a tantrum — all the time." The scientist explains that parts of her brain - specifically areas of the frontal lobe and parietal lobe - were not working properly.

Lipska notes that, "Deep inside my brain, a full-scale war had erupted. The tumors that had been radiated were shedding dead cells and creating waste and dead tissue. Throughout my brain, the tissues were inflamed and swollen from the metastasis and the double assault of radiation and immunotherapy. What’s more, I had new tumors—more than a dozen. My blood-brain barrier…..had become disrupted.....and was leaking fluid. The fluids were pooling in my brain, irritating the tissue and causing it to swell."

Lipska's family was disturbed and worried by the changes in her demeanor, but Barbara herself didn't realize anything was wrong - even when her conduct became increasingly bizarre. Examples of changes in Barbara's behavior during cancer treatment include:
- becoming irrationally furious at Amtrak when her train was delayed, and talking about it for days, to everyone in sight.
- refusing to seek help for lymphedema (swelling) in her arm, then yelling at the therapist and storming out when she finally went for treatment.
- compulsively eating chocolates - though she normally avoided sweets.
- driving her car erratically.
- failing to recognize her regular exterminator and throwing him out of the house.
- losing her ability to do simple arithmetic.
- becoming infuriated when she 'lost' her husband after sending him to pick chanterelle mushrooms in the park.
- being unable to locate pots, pans, and utensils in her kitchen.
- forgetting how to cook (though she normally prepared dinner every night).
- and more.

Lipska explains that her symptoms mimicked those of people suffering from various kinds of mental illness, like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, and other dementias. Barbara emphasizes that these mental illnesses are brain diseases - not moral defects - and should be treated like any other disease....like disorders of the heart, liver, or kidney.

Lipska did recover, both from the cancer and the side effects, though she's aware the 'cure' might not last forever. Still, Barbara's at peace, and very grateful to her family - as well as the doctors and other medical professionals who treated her. She says "I'm feeling great, although I am not as powerful as I used to be — both in terms of my physical strengths and emotions. I went through so much. My brain was assaulted with drugs, with radiation. I lost my vision in the left eye.....I lost some balance. I am a little disoriented spatially, so I have sometimes trouble with maps and finding my places. But, you know what? I'm alive — and that's all that counts. And I'm happy!"

The book is both informative and inspirational. Lipska provides a brief, but instructive description of the brain and how it works, with comparisons between experimental rats and humans. And it's heartening to see Barbara travel from health, to madness, and back again.

I'd recommend the book to anyone interested in the brain and mental illness;

Thanks to Netgalley, the authors (Barbara Lipska and Elaine McCardle), and the publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) for a copy of the book.

Many thanks go to Barbara Lipska, Houghton Mifflin, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review. If Brain on Fire had an impact on you then you must read this book This woman was a Polish immigrant and of the highest intellect. She ran her own brain study clinic, which makes what happened to her all the more ironic. She was a strong athlete and excelled at several activities. She cooked dinner every night for her family. But she lost all of that and more when she developed brain tumors. Her harrowing tale of treatment and recovery is told in this book. It scared me to death knowing this can happen to anyone and how finding the right doctor to heal any illness often takes luck and tenacity not to mention lots of funds, which most of Americans do not have. I think the most important thing about Lipska was that she never gave up. She did not always face her problems, but she also never let it beat her. She was a real trooper. And she had a strong support group. I was left with an inspiring quote by the end. Adorning one of hallways at Georgetown University Hospital is a quote: We are all broken, that's how the light gets in. Light heals. Light elicits good cheer. Light makes one smile in the darkness. I will take this thought away with me.

I gave this book a rating of 5 over 5 stars because it is very inspirational. Despite being physically fit, working for her passion, and being surrounded by the people she loves, cancer wound its way into her life. This is a well-written book about the author's challenging journey of her battle with cancer. I highly recommend this book to those who are struggling in their life and those who feel like they have reached rock bottom.

Barbara Lipska has written a fascinating account of her own brain illness. While nonfiction, it took me back at times to an old fiction favorite of mine, Flowers for Algernon, from many years ago. The author's explanations of her background, the workings of the brain, her illness, and her family's beautiful support of her and each other were woven so well into the book that it was truly pleasurable reading about a painful experience.

This book is very interesting as it describes the damage cancer can cause after being seemingly dormant. The viewpoint of a neuroscientist is a compelling take on brain tumors and the havoc they can cause. I would like to have learned more about how the tumors affected her personality, though the lack of information is understandable given the condition.

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind

The book title, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, presents an intriguing promise that is kept by Barbara K. Lipska writing with Elaine McArdle in her memoir. While she’s at it, she adds amazement to the organ that is the brain, first from her scientific knowledge and second from firsthand experience. The irony of melanoma spreading to the brain of a person who is an expert in the neuroscience of mental illness and has an understanding of what is happening makes the book infinitely fascinating.

Almost as interesting as the memoir itself are her comparisons of how what is happening to her holds similarity to others with dementia, schizophrenia, and other mental challenges. Her reflections after the ordeal is over explain her own lapse of control of her own emotions and actions and why and how this parallels to other mental illnesses. Her additional assessmemts of how behaviors and memory change with age, brain injuries, or mental illnesses are helpful in understanding memory loss and changes in behavior and personality.

The important learning from the book is woven into a nail-biting narrative of Barbara’s battle with the brain cancer and behavior that terrifies her supportive family and coworkers. I was glad I could count on a good ending since I knew she was author of the book. The fact that her memory and reason returned intact seems equally miraculous and medical.

I recommend the book to anyone who loves a suspenseful memoir and to anyone who is touched by someone with any type of mental illness.

Barbara Lipska, a Polish-born neuroscientist who serves as director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is a long-time researcher in the field of schizophrenia. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 and melanoma in 2011, Lipska had gone on to enjoy good health and a very active lifestyle for several years. Although advised in 2011 that there was a 30% chance of the melanoma recurring, she was confident that she had beaten it. However, in 2015, the then sixty-three-year-old neuroscientist found herself gaining first-hand experience of the kind of cognitive dysfunction and paranoia seen in the people whose disease she'd studied. A number of brain tumours—metastases of the melanoma that had been removed from behind her ear a few years before—were the cause.

The initial tumours were in the occipital lobe (responsible for vision) and, as a brain scientist, Lipska knew almost immediately that the loss of sight in the lower right quadrant of her visual field was almost certainly due to the spread of cancer. However, a significant tumour that would later grow in her frontal lobe would greatly affect her cognitive abilities as well as her capacity to regulate her emotions. Other regions of her brain would also be afflicted. Over a period of two months, during the summer of 2015, she “descended into madness”. She also regularly got lost, had trouble orienting her body (and her car) in space, and experienced significant problems with reading and basic arithmetic.

In her book, written with Elaine McArdle, Lipska documents her grueling struggle with one of the most lethal cancers. At the time of her diagnosis with metastatic melanoma, one of the original three tumours was bleeding and required immediate surgery. A bleed in the brain is serious. Blood irritates the tissues, causing them to swell dangerously. Pressure builds within the skull, and a patient can die when the brain “cones”—that is, when it is forced downward and the centres controlling heart rate and respiration are compressed.

After successful surgery to remove the raisin-sized cancerous growth that was bleeding, Lipska received targeted radiation to the other tumours. Only after this could such treatments as immunotherapy (which empowers the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells) and “targeted” therapy (aimed at specific molecules within cancer cells) be tried. In spite of an iron will and a high tolerance for pain and discomfort, Lipska confronted tumours that had minds of their own. They kept popping up “like weeds in a garden”. At one point, she had eighteen simultaneously. Many of us might not be able (or even want) to persist in the face of considerable suffering as Lipska did. However, she attributes at least some of her endurance to her long-time training and competing as a marathoner and tri-athlete. Lipska is still not out of the woods; however, the mostly new treatments she underwent have prolonged a life that she obviously values, even if that life continues to pose challenges.

While Lipska’s story is certainly interesting, the writing in the book is not the best. Some of it is quite cliché and bland. Apparently Lipska and McArdle strove for accessibility over detail, so some of the scientific information is very general. Lipska acknowledges that her bizarre and frankly hostile behaviour was difficult for her family to endure. The many examples of it form a significant portion of her book. However, with respect to this, Lipska sometimes doesn't supply enough detail for the reader to understand how her family agreed to let her carry on with her life as usual when she was clearly suffering significant mental disability. It seems, for example, that she continued to drive to work when there was ample evidence she had serious spatial deficits. Did no one notice the banged-up SUV? And why was she continuing to go for runs alone in the neighbourhood when it was clear that she was frequently disoriented and often got lost? Lipska does mention the distress of family members—the phone calls and tears—over her hurtful and aggressive behaviour, but it seems surprising that her neuroscientist son and endocrinologist daughter wouldn’t have figured out that their mother’s brain was significantly and dangerously impaired (in ways that could put herself and others at risk). They certainly knew about the tumours and their locations.

When discussing her first husband’s diagnosis and eventual (1985) death from the very same cancer she would later fight, Lipska mentions that in the Poland of the time, cancer was highly stigmatized. A diagnosis of malignancy was viewed as a sign of weakness and a loss of control over one’s life. No cancer patient discussed his condition with friends, or even with family. One has the sense in reading her memoir that this kind of attitude continued to affect (or, maybe, “infect”) Lipska herself. She states that her typical response to emergencies is to throw herself “into a rational, organized plan, and grasp whatever control” she can. She also writes that (earlier in her life) after breast cancer treatment, she was up and about on the fourth day and that she never failed to cook a meal when undergoing chemotherapy. While receiving treatment for her brain tumours, she remained physically active; she even ran a five-kilometer race a few weeks after her first radiation treatment, placing fourth in her age group. I suppose I should be impressed by this, but I honestly found Lipska’s drive bizarre and even alarming at times.

Generally Lipska’s husband, children, and grandchildren are presented quite stereotypically in her book. Her grandsons are adorable; her son, tall and handsome; and her daughter is beautiful and intelligent. I found myself occasionally wondering how Lipska, clearly a high-achieving Type-A personality, would manage if she had to describe children who were not athletic high achievers like herself. I also wondered what the descriptions of family might have been like if they'd been written by a writer other than McArdle--one more sensitive to language and nuance, who could tease compelling details out of her subject.

One of the biggest problems I had with <i><b>The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind</i></b> was the authors’ persistent use of the present tense. It often does not work well in a book of this sort. Explanatory information (also written in the present tense) about Lipska’s symptoms and the side effects of treatments is interwoven with the narrative proper. As a result, the reader can't always distinguish between what the author understood about her condition as she was experiencing it and what she only knew later--when she'd regained her faculties. “Is this what is happening with me?” she asks at a point in her story when it seems highly unlikely her brain would allowed her such reasoning. Lipska’s tumours created the conditions for anosognosia, a lack of insight into her disease. (50 % of those diagnosed with schizophrenia and 40% of bipolar patients also experience this lack of insight—and it often makes them non-compliant with treatment). The tumours themselves, along with the swelling of brain tissue, also triggered a complete loss of empathy in Lipska--the same lack of empathy that characterizes those stricken with fronto-temporal dementia—a form of dementia which sometimes strikes younger people in the 45-64 age group. In my opinion, to eliminate confusion, it would have made much more sense to narrate Lipska's story in the past tense, shifting only to the present tense when providing explanatory information.

Lipska believes that she “emerged from that dark place” through a combination of luck, groundbreaking scientific advances, vigilance, and the support of her family. To this combination should be added her educational level, financial means, and social connections. No matter how lucky, vigilant, and supported, a patient might be and no matter how advanced the medical treatments he undergoes, if he lacks a level of education that allows him to access and comprehend demanding medical literature which will assist him in advocating for himself, as well as the means to see some of the finest doctors in the land, he may not be able to gain the extra time Lipska so clearly treasures. Not everyone has a sister like Lipska’s: a physicist who happens to be the chief of therapy in the radiation oncology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where Lipska received her initial treatment.

Early in her book, Lipska says that one of her goals in writing is to identify the parallels between her experiences and the experiences of those with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. This she manages to do very well. Lipska emerges as a determined, admirable woman--a fighter. Her experience is certainly an interesting and terrifying one, but her book is not quite as compelling as I had expected.

Overall, <i>The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind</i> is a riveting tale of a high-functioning neuroscientist surviving the horrors of brain cancer. I would highly recommend this memoir to anyone dealing with cancer. I don't think this book would satisfy those looking for information on brain science and mental illness.

This autobiography by Barbara Lipski was very moving, but yet, very straight forward. This lady reminds me of my Mom, who was born in Prussia, and lived in Germany, until she met my Dad and moved to the U.S. The drive and determination are very much like my Mom's, and I respect this writer very much. The story was unbelievable, and I couldn't wait to finish the book, just to be sure Ms. Lipski was still alive! My Mom had a stroke four years ago, so a lot of the mental issues this book dealt with are very visible with my Mom.
I admire the stamina of this woman, and I know other people who have experienced anything like this, or with people who have faced this with loved ones, can relate to the struggles faced by this writer.
Thank you, Ms. Lipski, for writing this all down. I know, as the medical field strives forward in dealing with the brain, your research and insight will be most helpful.

This book was very comforting & insightful for me. If anyone has a loved one with a mental illness, this book may help you understand the certain situations you might find yourself in. I highly recommend this book whether you are interested in the subject for educational or personal reasons.

Thank you Netgalley and publishers for an advanced copy of this memoir. This is a fast and intriguing memoir about a neuroscientist's survival of brain cancer. Although there is quite a bit of medical language, it is presented in a way that is approachable and understandable and does not detract from the narrative. As you might imagine coming from a neuroscientist, the story is told in a very straightforward way (not a lot of emotion), yet the story of the impact of disease on her brain, behavior, and feelings is fascinating. There is so much that we do not understand about the brain and how it works, including mental illness and Alzheimer's, and behaviors that are displayed as a result, and this book provides some insight to what can be witnessed in the form of physical/mental manifestation. A great read for those interested in these issues.