WELCOME

So we'll begin. “I just want to tell you about

Nov. 19, 2018 by Lena Webb

So we'll begin. “I just want to tell you about my work in this area. I've been doing brain surgery for the past eight years and I spent a lot of years doing brain surgery at the NIH. I was doing some of the most important research on what it meant to have a brain, how to repair the damaged brain and what it could mean for you. This was before I'd been a neurosurgeon. And then I was doing a lot of research on the effects of spinal cord injury. And I was doing a lot of research on how to treat them, what they might do to make people better but what they would not. The work that I did was very successful, and I think it's really important to understand the implications of this research for people with these mental health struggles.

So in the middle of the first year after my surgery, I got into a series of meetings with the people who had been doing brain surgery. And I asked them to share their stories of how they were feeling and what was happening to them. And I asked them to share their stories of finding relief and what it might mean to be a better person. They said that it was a much stronger feeling, a whole new world. And it's a very empowering experience, because they have so much more knowledge and experience about the world than my patients.‡

I remember telling some of these people that I was going to talk about the neuroscience of the brain and how it affected their perception of themselves. And I really wanted to talk about it, because it's really important that you get your information from these people and make the right choices.‡

I think there's a strong connection between the neural systems of a person and the other, less-developed, parts of their body. And I think that's something that we can all agree upon. The fact that a person has to undergo brain surgery to repair their brain is a very, very important part of their experience, and we should just put our focus on that and not go overboard.

But I think also, as this conversation goes along, that the thing we need to do, whether we think it or not, is to recognize that there are ways to make change in the world that aren't necessarily based on rational expectations, that aren't based on empirical evidence. And that we have to start with some evidence. If we think about the way we think about our own lives, we're going to find those things that are really important for everybody. And that