Your Brain Is Making It Up: Confabulations and the Lies that Make Us Human

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Topic: Your Brain Is Making This Up: Fables, Confabulations, and the Lies That Make Us Human
Speaker: Pria Anand, MD (Boston University School of Medicine | Author of The Mind Electric)

What happens when the brain’s storytelling machinery goes wrong?

Our brains are constantly interpreting the world, filling in missing details, and weaving experiences into coherent narratives that make reality feel stable and understandable.

Most of the time, this works beautifully.

But sometimes the system breaks.

In rare neurological conditions, the brain invents elaborate explanations for things it cannot understand. Patients may confidently describe events that never happened, construct intricate stories to explain impossible situations, or create vivid memories out of thin air. These strange cases — known as confabulations — reveal something profound about how all of our minds work.

In this talk, neurologist and writer Dr. Pria Anand will explore what happens when the brain’s storytelling machinery goes awry, and what those moments reveal about the human mind.

Along the way, we’ll encounter:

• What Sherlock Holmes, Massachusetts vampires, and The Arabian Nights can teach us about our brains
• Why the mind is fundamentally a storytelling organ
• How strange neurological symptoms reveal something universal about human cognition
• Why medical diagnoses are shaped as much by narrative as they are by science

Dr. Anand is a neurologist at Boston Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. She trained at Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Massachusetts General Hospital, and her work focuses on neuro-infectious diseases, hospital neurology, and narrative medicine.

She is also the author of The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains, a finalist for the PEN America E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and named one of the Best Books of 2025 by Publisher’s Weekly, Barnes & Noble, Book Riot, and others.
Check out her book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mind-Electric/Pria-Anand/9781668064016

Don't miss this opportunity to explore the strange, fascinating ways our brains construct reality.
Agenda
7:00 PM – Doors open: find a seat and order some drinks.
7:30 PM – Host introduction
7:35 PM – Lecture begins
8:15 PM – Audience Q&A
8:30–9:00 PM – Feel free to mingle with the speaker and fellow guests. Grab a final round of drinks!

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