Sarah Lidstone has a long history with the medical world. A ballet dancer from the age of 3, she developed acute scoliosis and wore a back brace throughout much of her teens. “I spent a lot of my childhood in doctors’ offices,” she says with a wide Cheshire grin. “I loved carrying my X-rays around when I was 10.”
The brace gradually coaxed Lidstone’s body to straighten itself out, but her experience left her with an enduring fascination for medicine and a desire to ease the suffering of others. In college she gravitated to brain science, and particularly to Parkinson’s disease, a crippling condition caused by chronically low dopamine levels in the brain. Dopamine, in addition to moderating mood, controls brain regions crucial to movement. Lidstone was fascinated by the brain’s dopamine systems and by these patients, who were trapped in bodies that wouldn’t respond properly.
After starting her doctorate ...
