When we talk about the brain, we often think of its connection to mind and what makes us human: thought, feeling, and memory. But equally important is its role in motion. How does the brain so effortlessly allow us to translate desire into movement? What happens when motion goes terribly wrong, such as in Huntington's disease or Parkinson's?

Neurologist Anne Buckingham Young has done us a great service in publishing her memoir, Disorderly Movements: A Neurologist’s Adventures in the Lab and Life, released in May by Cambridge University Press.

It offers a rare window into the development of neurology over the past 50 years, told through the eyes of a rebellious pioneer who, despite wrestling with dyslexia and bipolar disorder—as well as the pervasive shadow of sexism in science—became the first woman to chair a department at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard’s flagship teaching hospital.

Young’s scientific contributions are numerous. She identified receptors for the neurotransmitters GABA and glycine, revealing their role in movement. She devised a new form of neuroimaging to help scientists peer deeper into the living brain. She even played a role in discovering the genetic signature underlying Huntington’s disease.

Her memoir documents the unique thought processes and life experiences that gave rise to some of the discoveries that shaped our modern understanding of motion.

Before she was a neurologist, Anne Young was a rebellious tomboy with a flair for disruption. Her memoir opens along the banks of Lake Michigan in Illinois, where she was born and raised. Dyslexia........

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