The ghost in my brainThe ghost in my brain
All In The Mind
When a professor of artificial intelligence had disturbing brain injury symptoms as a result of a concussion, he lost his former self—but encouraged by the potential of brain plasticity he changed the course of his life.
29:18•15 Jan 2017
The Ghost in My Brain: How Clark Elliott Reclaimed His Sense of Self
Episode Overview
- Concussion can cause subtle yet devastating cognitive changes that are hard to explain and often misdiagnosed.
- Under brain stress, abilities such as recognising spatial relationships or even turning right can temporarily disappear.
- Loss of brain functions can lead to a deep sense of alienation, where a person appears normal but feels no longer fully human.
- Specialised glasses and structured puzzle work can harness brain plasticity, routing signals through healthier tissue and strengthening new pathways.
- Gradual, consistent therapy may restore both cognitive abilities and a felt sense of self, even many years after the original injury.
“We walk on earth as normal human beings, but inside, the machinery that allows us to be human and to feel in a normal way is gone.”
How do people manage co-occurring mental and physical health issues while recovering? This episode of All In The Mind follows professor of artificial intelligence Dr Clark Elliott as he confronts life after a seemingly minor car accident that left his brain profoundly changed.
You’ll hear Clark describe in vivid detail how concussion quietly dismantled his everyday abilities: he couldn’t separate an insurance card from a small stack of papers, struggled to walk through doorways, and even went two days without eating because he couldn’t choose between an apple and salami.
More unsettling still was losing the right-hand side of his world, an eerie form of neglect where turning right or reading numbers on the right of a page became impossible, yet almost unimaginable to him. Alongside host Lynne Malcolm, Clark explains the most disturbing loss of all: his sense of self. He felt like a "ghost" walking through life, outwardly functional but inwardly stripped of the machinery that lets someone feel fully human and emotionally connected.
After eight years of failed appointments and bleak prognoses, Clark’s story shifts when he meets psychologist Dr Donna Lee Marcus and neuro-optometrist Dr Deborah Zielinski. Through specially prescribed glasses and painstaking pencil-and-paper puzzles, they tap into the brain’s ability to reroute signals through healthier tissue, gradually turning "dirt paths" into new cognitive highways.
Clark recalls starting with simple shapes, eventually working up to complex 3D patterns, and feeling like a baby rediscovering the world as his visual and cognitive systems came back online. By the time he senses an invisible figure drawing closer over several weeks, he realises, with tears of relief, that the presence is his old self returning. His experience raises big questions about identity, consciousness and what it means to be human.
If the brain can rebuild so much, what possibilities might exist for others living with invisible injuries and lingering symptoms? If you’ve ever wondered whether change is possible after years of feeling "not yourself", this story might leave you asking what hidden paths your own brain could still build.
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