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. We are not sure, still, why it worked, but we believe that all the drugs worked in concert,” she says, adding that similar trials are being conducted now with other patients, and that brain surgeons the world over are keen to learn the results. Competing again Thanks to Netgalley, the authors (Barbara Lipska and Elaine McArdle) and the publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) for a copy of the book. Her tenacity paid off. Despite some horrendous side effects – the mood swings alongside full-body rashes that, she was subsequently told, were as deadly as the cancer itself – she got better. The tumours disappeared; the madness subsided. Doctors were awed. Lipska survived and, with journalist Elaine McArdle, has written a book about her illness and recovery called The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Discovery.

The tumours in my brain became inflamed, and it was this subsequent swelling that made me lose my mind,” she says. “I was crazy for probably two months, but I didn’t realise it at the time, which is unfortunate, because if I had I would have realised that what was happening to me was amazing, incredible; I might have learned from it.” An even shorter fuse 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 body’s 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. All we think, feel and dream, how we move, if we move, everything that makes us who we are, comes from the brain. We are the brain. So what happens when the brain fails? What happens when we lose our mind? 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. AMANDA RIPLEY, New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World and The Unthinkable

Lipska’s 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. This is one strong lady used to being in charge and when her brain started acting off, her family really didn't know how to react, and she didn't realize it's happening, so it's a real mess for a while because no one wants to take the reins from her or tell her she's not in charge anymore. Which brings us to Lipska’s point. We assume there’s a certain type of person who loses their mind. In fact, it could happen to anyone, for any number of reasons that we don’t even know yet. And because the brain and its behavioral manifestations are so mysterious, and because we are so ignorant of it, we are afraid and ashamed of its power to destroy us. Many thanks go to Barbara Lipska, Houghton Mifflin, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.

Lipska’s personal experience transformed the way she thinks about mental health and mental illness, as she writes in her book. For most of her adult life, she was an energetic, determined, ambitious researcher, devoted to her work, family, and running marathons. But after she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2015 and began taking medications to deal with the illness, she became someone else—and not someone she liked. “I was completely disinhibited.”

Lipska believes the world can get better at treating mental illness. But as she explains in her book The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery, published in April 2018, part of the solution lies in ceasing to distinguish between mental and physical problems. A very good book written by multiple cancer survivor Barbara Lipska, who is such an accomplished lady. She is the head of the brain bank at NIMH (National Institute of M. H.) in and has studied the brain for over 30 years. Until one day hers seemingly went haywire and she had to go and get treated for melanoma in the brain. While she was being treated for it, it left her acting like she had some of the mental illnesses that she'd been studying all those decades. Personalitatea fiecărui om este rezultatul unor interacțiuni complexe între factori nenumărați care influențează funcționarea creierului." In the field of psychiatry, which is rife with mysteries, fugue states are, perhaps fittingly, totally elusive. They are rare, extreme escapes from the self that last as little as a few hours to years. But they do happen, and they seem to be triggered by common life stressors—financial woes, work problems, relationship difficulties, and the like. The mystery writer Agatha Christie was diagnosed with a dissociative fugue in 1926 after her mother’s death and upon discovering her husband had a lover. As it was, it fell to her family members to live with her abrupt change in character, to make notes of it, and share it with her much later, when she would react with horrified fascination. Lipska has always had an explosive personality, she says. During her madness, her short fuse became shorter.

While Lipska herself was given a clean bill of health, such invasive procedures did leave permanent wounds in her brain. She is also now blind in her left eye, which means that hiking in the mountains has become difficult, though she has just signed up for another triathlon. 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 Lipska’s commitment to optimism.Amintirile pe termen lung sunt puse deoparte de creierele noastre și sunt păstrate în strânsă legătură cu trăiri emoționale, pentru că pot fi importante pentru supraviețuire. Informațiile stocate în memoria pe termen scurt sunt mai degrabă evenimente temporare care așteaptă să fie categorizate și evaluate. Dacă sunt importante, vor fi stocate. Dacă nu, nu primesc validarea pentru a fi reținute și se pierd."

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. Primul soț al autoarei s-a îmbolnăvit de melanom, o formă de cancer care avea o rată de supraviețuire de doar câteva luni (la acea vreme). La scurt timp, căsnicia celor doi s-a răcit. De ce? Păi, cică omul trăia în negare, adică nu îi venea să creadă că va muri și s-a închis în el. Probabil trebuia să îi ducă flori, când venea de la chimioterapie. Așa că autoarea l-a înșelat. Nici măcar nu a avut decența de a se despărți de el înainte să se culce cu altul. Peste ani, s-a îmbolnăvit și ea de aceeași formă de cancer. Atât de scârbită am fost de atitudinea ei, încât i-am numit boala ,,karma". 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. Barbara Lipska is the director of the Human Brain Bank at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C. An internationally recognized researcher in human brain development and mental illness, Dr. Lipska has a doctorate in Medical Sciences from the Medical School of Warsaw. Faptul că avem aceleași celule nervoase de la începutul până la sfârșitul vieții noastre poate fi unul dintre motivele pentru care ne considerăm pe sine ca fiind ,,noi". Ceea ce totuși se poate schimba sunt conexiunile dintre celule și dintre regiunile țesutului cerebral. Unele legături sunt mai puternice, altele dispar, altele se strică. Dacă o regiune a creierului nu mai funcționează cum trebuie, între celule pot apărea noi conexiuni care să ne ajute să recuperăm, într-o proporție mai mică sau mai mare, funcția alterată. Dar, în acest fel, se schimbă oare esența noastră?"

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Of course, I knew all this before,” she explains. But knowing in theory isn’t the same as experiencing the effects herself. So when she recovered from cancer and the pressure was off her brain, literally, she applied her scientific knowledge to the terrifying personal experience and wrote her book. In one passage, she writes: