NPR Health Blog: This doctor unlocks mysteries of the brain by talking and watching
Photo by M. Scott Brauer for NPR
The heavyset man with a bandage on his throat is having trouble repeating a phrase. “No ifs…” he says to the medical students and doctors around his bed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“Can I hear you say no ifs, ands or buts?” says Dr. Allan Ropper, the Harvard neurologist in charge. The patient tries again. “No ifs, buts, ands or,” he says.
Ropper’s heard enough. “I think he’s probably had a little left temporal, maybe angular gyrus-area stroke,” he tells the students and doctors, once they’re assembled outside the patient’s room. A brain scan confirms his diagnosis.
Read more at Shots: the NPR Health Blog
