Lost and Found

When an illness alters the brain, does the person you knew remain? Neurologist Dr Jules Montague treats patients with dementia and other brain conditions, and in this book she examines what survives of a person when parts of the mind go missing. The book covers a wide range of conditions, including dementia, brain injury, sleep disorders, coma and multiple personality disorder.

Much of the discussion centres on memory. Montague asks why some memories last while others fade, why you can walk into a room and forget your reason for being there, and whether false memories, which the mind can create rather than lose, still belong to you and still shape who you are.

She also looks beyond memory to other parts of identity. The book considers who we are while dreaming, during unconsciousness and after waking from a coma, and whether a dramatic change in personality caused by dementia or multiple personality disorder means a person is still fundamentally the same. It also asks whether a brain disorder could sometimes awaken creativity or bring out hidden talents.

The book combines first-hand accounts from the author's everyday clinical work with recent thinking about what makes us who we are. It is about how people and their relationships can be lost through brain disorders, and how they might still be found.