Blackouts and white coats

In the cult Steve Martin film The Man With Two Brains, a doctor falls in love with a surgically removed brain. The object of his desire (fizzing, if I remember rightly, in a demijohn of formaldehyde) makes for an enduring gothic comedy of the mind. On the movie’s release in the early 1980s, neuroscience was still in its infancy. Men in white coats were cutting up monkey brains and their laboratories smelled of monkey urine. In recent years, however, neuro-imaging has changed the study of the human mind completely. Rainbow-coloured images on the scanner screen reveal our most precious and mysterious organ in all its alien complexity.

Computer imaging may yet fathom the mystery of epilepsy. From the Greek ‘to capture’ or ‘to seize’, epilepsy is commonly viewed as a rather spooky disorder, associated at times with demonic possession. The real causes for epilepsy remain unknown. Colin Grant’s A Smell of Burning, a
flawless amalgam of personal memoir, mind science and medical history, casts a sympathetic eye on those afflicted by the condition.