Dr. Barbara K. Lipska, the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health discusses her memoir The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), with Joseph Planta.

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery by Barbara K. Lipska (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

Barbara Lipska is one of the foremost researchers of the brain. So you would think she would know the signs as she descended into madness, exhibiting signs of dementia and schizophrenia as she did over three years ago. Her field of study was mental illness and human brain development, but it were these signs and the subsequent diagnosis that she got from her doctors that Dr. Lipska was found to have tumours in her brain. We’re talking about 20 tumours in fact. She talks about her ordeal and the lessons derived from it in her recent book The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery. It’s a compelling book about how her experiences gave her a new understanding of mental health despite a career’s worth of research. I’ll get her to tell us about how she came back, how emerged from her ordeal, and not just medically but emotionally. Barbara Lipska is the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she has been since 1989, and from which she’s published over 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals. This new book is written with Elaine McArdle. It’s published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Barbara Lipska; Dr. Lipska, good morning.

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