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Online Author Talk With Pria Anand

On the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains

Join us online for a fascinating conversation with neurologist and author Pria Anand to chat about her new book "The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains." Adults. Register to get a link. A recording will also be available for later viewing.

Register and submit questions for the author!

You’re invited to a fascinating conversation with neurologist and author Pria Anand to chat about her new book "The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains."

"The Mind Electric" speaks to the stories we tell ourselves about our brains, and the stories that our brains tell to us.

A girl believes she has been struck blind for stealing a kiss. A mother watches helplessly as each of her children is replaced by a changeling. A woman is haunted each month by the same four chords of a single song. In neurology, illness is inextricably linked with narrative, the clues to unraveling these mysteries hidden in both the details of a patient's story and the tells of their body.

Stories are etched into the very structure of our brains, coded so deeply that the impulse for storytelling survives and even surges after the most devastating injuries. But our brains are also porous—the stories they concoct are shaped by cultural narratives about bodies and illness that permeate the minds of doctors and patients alike. In the history of medicine, some stories are heard, while others—the narratives of women, of Black and brown people, of displaced people, of disempowered people—are too often dismissed.

"In The Mind Electric," neurologist Pria Anand reveals—through case study, history, fable and memoir—all that the medical establishment has overlooked: the complexity and wonder of brains in health and in extremis, and the vast gray area between sanity and insanity, doctor and patient, and illness and wellness, each separated from the next by the thin veneer of a different story.

Adults. Register to receive a link for viewing this online event.

About the Author: Pria Anand is a neurologist at the Boston Medical Center and an Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. She is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Medical School, and she trained in neurology, neuro-infectious diseases and neuroimmunology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

This event is part of DBRL's Online Author Series, supported by David Lile honorarium funds. A recording will also be available for later viewing on the author series site.

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