Susannah Cahalan quotes:

To move foward, you have to leave the past behind

The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess.

Maybe it's true what Thomas Moore said: "It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.

On April 2, the nurses started my first round of five intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusions. The clear IV bags hung on a metal pole above my head, their liquid trickling down into my vein. Each of those ordinary-looking bags contained the healthy antibodies of over a thousand blood donors and cost upwards of $20,000 per infusion. One thousand tourniquets, one thousand nurses, one thousand veins, one thousand blood-sugar regulating cookies, all just to help one patient.

Sometimes, Just when we need them, life wraps metaphors up in little bows for us. When you think all is lost, the things you need the most return unexpectedly.

We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.

When the brain is working to remember something, similar patterns of neurons fire as they did during the perception of the original event. These networks are linked, and each time we revisit them, they become stronger and more associated. But they need the proper retrieval cues--words, smells, images-- for them to be brought back as memories