Coffee & Conversation — ‘The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind’ by Barbara K. Lipska

Tuesday, May 11, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

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.

Everyone, age 6 or older, who attends library programs are required to wear masks.

Please note any accommodation requests in the Special Needs section of the registration form.

All those not arriving together must maintain a 6-foot social distance.

If Campbell County is RED on the Kentucky Department for Public Health’s COVID-19 Dashboard, all in-person programs will be cancelled and those registered will be offered the online option.

If you have any questions, please contact Morgan at mlockard@cc-pl.org.

Carrico/Fort Thomas Branch