SWITCHED ON is coming - an exciting tale of brain stimulation and life transformation

Alvaro Pascual Leone, MD, Lindsay Oberman, Phd, and me in the lab

Straight off the Random House News Wire:

Jessica Sindler of the Random House Publishing Group’s Spiegel & Grau imprint has acquired North American rights to Switched On by John Elder Robison, with a Foreword by Dr. Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University, and an Introduction by Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone of Harvard Medical School.

Robison is the author of New York Times bestseller Look Me in the Eye, a moving memoir of his life with Asperger’s syndrome. Switched On will trace his fascinating journey after having his emotional intelligence “unlocked” by a revolutionary new brain therapy called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) that is being pioneered at Harvard Medical School. TMS represents a new frontier of scientific possibility for people with autism spectrum disorders, as well as those living with depression, bi-polar disorder and other conditions. Switched On is a real-life Flowers for Algernon with a happy ending, a compelling memoir that blends Robison’s brilliant storytelling abilities and humor with cutting-edge science, and a message of hope for science that has the potential to touch millions of lives. As Robison describes his transformation: “For the first time in my life, I learned what it was like to truly ‘know’ other people’s feelings. It was as if I’d been experiencing the world in black and white all my life, and suddenly I could see everything—and particularly other people—in brilliant beautiful color.”

John Elder Robison is a New York Times bestselling author, a world-recognized authority on life with autism, the Neurodiversity Scholar in Residence at the College of William and Mary, and a member of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee for the US Department of Health and Human Services.  John has served on boards and committees for the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization’s ICF autism core set project, and many private foundations.  John is also a member of the International Society for Autism Research.  Sindler acquired the project from Steve Ross, Director of the Book Division at Abrams Artists Agency.