Brainstorm

True neurological mysteries from the consulting room. A man sees cartoon characters running across the room. A teenager comes home with inexplicably torn clothes. One girl’s world becomes Alice in Wonderland; another collapses like a ragdoll whenever she thinks about moving. For neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, such symptoms are clues. Brainstorm follows patients whose experiences are so unusual that diagnosis becomes a form of detective work, requiring close attention to tiny details of behaviour, sensation and memory. Feelings of déjà vu can point towards the hippocampus; apparently unrelated movements or fears can lead a neurologist towards particular regions and processes in the brain. O’Sullivan takes readers through that reasoning while never losing sight of the people whose lives depend on getting the diagnosis right. Written by the bestselling, prizewinning author of It’s All in Your Head, Sleeping Beauties and The Age of Diagnosis, this is a journey through neurological medicine and the extraordinary variety of human experience, showing how much the brain can reveal precisely when it begins to behave strangely. ‘I loved it. She is in my view the best science writer around – a true descendant of Oliver Sacks’ Sathnam Sanghera