Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: Extraordinary Journeys into the Human Brain

by Allan H. Ropper

As they play at the computer, a patient sits twenty feet away, just beyond a glass door and curtains. He was admitted three hours ago with the sudden onset of a speech difficulty and a complete personality change. The team hasn’t visited him yet. Instead, they are transfixed by the images of his brain up on the screen, like passengers glued to the in-flight movie as they fly over the Grand Canyon at sunrise. It reminds me of an old joke: Two grandmothers meet on the boardwalk, one pushing a baby carriage. “That’s a beautiful granddaughter,” the friend says, and the other replies, “This is nothing, you should see her pictures.”