Why am I passionate about this?
For nearly 7 years I watched my father decline from Alzheimer’s. It was perhaps the most difficult journey I’ve ever taken. My book, My Father’s Brain, is a memoir of my relationship with my father as he succumbed to his disease, but it is also a scientific and historical inquiry into the fragility of the brain. In the book, I set my father’s descent into dementia alongside my own journey, as a doctor, writer, and son, toward understanding this mysterious and devastating disease.
Sandeep's book list on the complexities of Alzheimer's and dementia
Why did Sandeep love this book?
Corkin, a research psychologist, presents a fascinating case study of her patient, Henry Molaison, a man with no memory. Molaison—or H.M., as he was known in the scientific literature until his death in 2008—was a 27-year-old with severe epilepsy when he underwent radical brain surgery in 1953 to cure his intractable seizures.
Though Molaison’s seizures largely abated after the operation, he developed an even bigger problem, which manifested almost immediately after his surgery. Daily events vanished from his mind almost as soon as they had occurred.
Like most patients living with dementia, he could form no new long-term memories. With no new memories, he lived in a perpetual present, disconnected from his past (or at least the past after his surgery) and his future.
1 author picked Permanent Present Tense as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
In 1953, 27-year-old Henry Gustave Molaison underwent an experimental psychosurgical" procedure,a targeted lobotomy,in an effort to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The outcome was unexpected,when Henry awoke, he could no longer form new memories, and for the rest of his life would be trapped in the moment. But Henry's tragedy would prove a gift to humanity. As renowned neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin explains in Permanent Present Tense , she and her colleagues brought to light the sharp contrast between Henry's crippling memory impairment and his preserved intellect. This new insight that the capacity for remembering is housed in a specific brain area…