Both a compassionate biography and a lucid account of the advances in neuroscience made possible through one man’s personal...
Neuroscientist Corkin writes of her unique relationship with amnesiac Henry Gustav Molaison, or H.M., as he was referred to in a mountain of scientific papers, and of his invaluable contribution to the scientific understanding of memory.
For nearly five decades, Corkin (Emeritus, Behavioral Neuroscience/MIT; co-editor: The Neurobiology of Alzheimer's Disease, 1996, etc.) talked with and tested Molaison, who, at age 27 in 1953, had undergone experimental surgery to cure his epilepsy and as a result of removal of parts of his brain had lost the ability to store long-term memories. For the rest of his life, Molaison lived in the present tense. His severe impairment brought him to the attention of the scientific community, eager to understand how memory works. Corkin shows Molaison, whose identity was kept secret during his lifetime, to have been an amiable, intelligent man who cooperated willingly with the neuroscientists, performing countless tests for them and undergoing numerous CT and MRI scans of his brain. For him, every experience was a first-time one; he could not remember an event or person for more than a few seconds. Though he could never recall who she or her co-workers were, the author came to know him well and admire him. Corkin gives the specifics of the many behavioral tasks she asked him to perform, and she relates in clear language the significance of what they revealed about the mechanisms of memory. Molaison’s story does not end with his death in 2008, for his brain has been preserved and will continue to be analyzed.
Both a compassionate biography and a lucid account of the advances in neuroscience made possible through one man’s personal tragedy.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-03159-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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