February Narrative Medicine Rounds with Dr. Sandeep Jauhar

For our first Rounds of the spring semester, we are thrilled to welcome back best-selling author and cardiologist Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, who will speak to us about his latest book, MY FATHER'S BRAIN, a memoir of his relationship with his father as he succumbed to dementia. In the book, Jauhar sets his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s alongside his own journey toward understanding his father’s disease. MY FATHER'S BRAIN, named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, and is a Smithsonian top ten science book of 2023, is deeply affecting memoir of a father’s descent into dementia, and a revelatory inquiry into why the human brain degenerates with age and what we can do about it. Sandeep Jauhar has written several bestselling books, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

Dr. Jauhar will be in conversation with Dr. James Noble, a neurologist at Columbia Medical Center and a recognized neurologic educator at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, who has himself recently published a book about dementia for caregivers: NAVIGATING LIFE WITH DEMENTIA, published by Oxford University Press. 

Dr. James Noble first arrived at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in 2002 as a medical intern and since then has developed his career entirely at Columbia. He is now an Associate Professor of Neurology in the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain and GH Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. His clinical, research, outreach, advocacy, and education efforts are focused on modifiable risk factors of cognitive aging and improving awareness of neurological disorders. He is the clinical core leader of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia and directs several large programs funded by the National Institute of Aging. He is co-editor of the 14th edition of standard text Merritt’s Neurology (Wolters-Kluwer, 2021) and is the author of the caregiver handbook “Navigating Life with Dementia” (Oxford University Press/American Academy of Neurology, 2022). He has held multiple education roles at Columbia including neurology clerkship director (2009-2016), preclinical neuroscience associate course director (2017-present) and founding director of the Brief Research In Aging and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience (BRAIN) T35, which has supported more than 200 medical student projects to date. In 2010 he co-founded Arts & Minds, a non-profit organization which provides art-centered museum-based programs to persons with dementia and their care partners, which to date has delivered over 1500 programs. Dr. Noble's first experience with narrative medicine was in Atlanta in August 1998, on the first day of medical school at Emory. The experience inspired much of Dr. Noble's general approach to neurological care.

Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Rounds are supported by live captioning. If you have any other accessibility needs or concerns, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or disability@columbia.edu at least 10 days in advance of the event. We do our best to arrange accommodations received after this deadline but cannot guarantee them. A recording of our Virtual Narrative Medicine rounds is available following the live session on the Narrative Medicine YouTube channel, and you can watch other recent Rounds events there.