CISS Affiliate Pria Anand’s New Release Is a Sweeping Yet Intimate Look at the Mysteries of the Brain
When neurologist Pria Anand began her medical training, she often worried that she was relying too heavily on her patients’ personal stories of their ailments and not enough on their lab results. Today, she views it differently—she’s come to understand that these personal narratives are crucial to gaining a comprehensive picture of the issues a patient faces.
“I’ve learned to piece together diagnoses not only from the involuntary tells of the body,” says Anand, an assistant professor of neurology at Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, “but also from the ways people choose to tell their story, informed by what they value, what they love, what their illness has taken from them.”
In her debut book The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains (Washington Square Press, 2025), Anand explores how storytelling shapes our understanding of illness.
To read more, visit BU Today where this article originally appeared on July 24, 2025.