Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-290).

The inward empire: the marrow of the skull: the birth of neurology and a basic guide to the brain -- Lost: the man who couldn't open a door: a guide to proprioception -- Help me: Phineas Gage, the most famous neurological patient in history -- The Frankenstein dance: the first recorded case of MS -- The dead teach the living: "I only observe, nothing more": Jean-Martin Charcot and the discovery of MS -- The ghost on the green: Myelin, the mysterious--and misunderstood--substance at the heart of MS -- Hyde: the viking gene, the equator, and vitamin D: the hunt for the possible causes of MS -- Inside the tent: the art of diagnosis -- The explorers' club.

"My daughter took her first steps on the day I was diagnosed - a juxtaposition so perfect, so trite, so filled with the tacky artifice of real life that I am generally too embarrassed to tell anybody about it." Shortly after his daughter Leontine was born, Christian Donlan's world shifted an inch to the left. He started to miss light switches and door handles when reachingfor them. He would injure himself in a hundred stupid ways every day. First playful and then maddening, these strange experiences were the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis, an incurable and degenerative neurological disease. Ashis young daughter starts to investigate the world around her, he too finds himself exploring a new landscape - the shifting and bewildering territory ofthe brain. He is a tourist in his own body, a stranger in a place that plays bizarre tricks on him, from dizzying double vision to mystifying memory loss. Determined to master his new environment, Christian takes us on a fascinating and illuminating journey: through the history of neurology, the joys andanxieties of parenthood, and the ultimate realisation of what, after everything you take for granted has been stripped away from you, is truly important in life. An Unmapped Mind is a profoundly personal, uplifting and enriching memoir that will change the way you see your body, your mind, and the world around you.