A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain

As a cognitive neurologist, Peskin (Univ. of Pennsylvania) sees her role as connecting a patient’s narrative to “the molecules causing the problem.” In this first book, she tells the stories of patients (some her own, others from history) who have been upended by “mutants, rebels, invaders, and evaders”—molecules that hijack the brain and cause diseases that can lead to personality and movement disorders, hallucinations, seizures, memory loss, even death. These illnesses include Huntington’s disease, Pick’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, multiple neuritis, Alzheimer’s and early-onset Alzheimer’s, pellagra, and the now-extinct kuru. By exploring the molecular and genetic underpinnings of these diseases, researchers have been able to understand them far better and successfully treat some patients. More needs to be done, including improvements in diagnosis, but Peskin believes that advances are within reach, and that Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s can be prevented or even cured within our lifetimes.