Stories are etched into the very structure of our brains, coded so deeply that the impulse for storytelling survives and even surges after the most devastating injuries. But our brains are also porous—the stories they concoct 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, of Black and brown people, of displaced people, of disempowered people—are too often dismissed.

In The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains, neurologist Pria Anand, MD, 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, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, she demonstrates repeatedly the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that even the most peculiar symptoms can show us something universal about ourselves as humans.

Anand is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Medical School, and she trained in neurology, neuro-infectious diseases, and neuroimmunology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. She is now an assistant professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine, and she cares for patients at Boston Medical Center.

Anand will be in conversation with Anupam B. Jena, MD, Ph.D. (FAN ’23), the Joseph P. Newhouse Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and a physician in the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the host of the Freakonomics, MD podcast, and co-author of Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health

BONUS AFTER-HOURS EVENT: FAN donors are invited to attend a private AFTER-HOURS event hosted by Anand and Jena that will start immediately after the webinar. Details on the webinar registration page.

This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.