This is a virtual-only presentation. Please register to receive your link to watch it live at home or at a later time and to submit any questions for the author.
You're invited to a fascinating conversation with neurologist and author Pria Anand about her new book, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains (forthcoming June 10, 2025).
The Mind Electric speaks to the stories we tell ourselves about our brains and the stories our brains tell us.
A girl believes she has been struck blind for stealing a kiss. A mother watches helplessly as a changeling replaces each of her children. 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 are hidden in 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 profoundly 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, Black and Brown people, displaced people, and 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.
Moving from the Boston hospital where she treats her patients to her childhood years in India, Isla Providencia in the Caribbean, and the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, she repeatedly demonstrates the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that even the most peculiar symptoms can reveal something universal about ourselves as humans. Register now to join this intriguing virtual conversation!
You may also like the following events from Chippewa River District Library:
- Next Thursday, 17th July, 08:00 pm, Summer Series Virtual Author Talk: Discerning the Truth with Marie Lu in Mount Pleasant, Michigan
- This month, 21st July, 05:00 pm, Beat the Heat: Messy Art Night & Color Splash Obstacle Course in Mount Pleasant
- This month, 23rd July, 08:00 pm, Summer Virtual Author Series: Illuminating Hope and Grace in the Face of Hardship with Rex Ogle in Mount Pleasant, Michigan
Also check out other
Arts events in Salford,
Literary Art events in Salford,
Health & Wellness events in Salford.
