Which Form 2350 Insights 2023-2024

I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. As a sister and later as a scientist, I wanted to understand why he cannot connect his dreams to a common and shared reality. Instead, his dreams become delusions. So, I dedicated my career to researching severe mental illnesses. I moved from my home state of Indiana to Boston to work in the lab of Dr. Francine Venice in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry. In the lab, we were investigating the biological differences between the brains of individuals diagnosed with normal control and those with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or bipolar disorder. We were mapping the microcircuitry of the brain, identifying which cells were communicating with each other and the chemicals involved. While my research during the day was meaningful to me, in the evenings and on weekends, I traveled as an advocate for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). However, on the morning of December 10, 1996, my life took a turn. I woke up to discover that I had a brain disorder of my own. A blood vessel in the left half of my brain had exploded, causing my brain to deteriorate within four hours. During the hemorrhage, I lost the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. I became essentially an infant in a woman's body. If you have ever seen a human brain, you would know that the two hemispheres are completely separate from each other. I brought a real human brain to demonstrate this. The two cerebral cortices are separate, with communication occurring primarily through the corpus callosum. However, the hemispheres process information differently. Each hemisphere thinks about and cares about different things. They have distinct personalities. The right hemisphere, which functions like a parallel...