RaveScienceThroughout the book, Lipska leverages her explicit understanding of the brain’s complex connections and the relationships between functional areas to weave together tactile and real scenes and characters from her life. Her project succeeds across a range of criteria. She is adept at employing her vast technical knowledge as a neuroscientist ... She also provides a rich sensory experience by translating her ordeal into experiences the reader might feel, taste, and smell ... Lipska’s prose soars when narrating her experiences ... We, the reader, experience her slow departure from reality alongside her, never realizing the moment her account of events becomes unreliable ... This grappling with identity—and Lipska’s gradual acceptance that the sense of self is both the outcome of, and the struggle with, our own physiology—may be the book’s greatest contribution.
