Neuroscientist Credits Unconditional Love for Surviving Terminal Cancer

If deep, unconditional love could change the path of Alzheimer’s, my parents would both still be with me. But there’s evidence of love’s potential to bolster our health, and I have no doubt that such love can, in certain cases, change the course of disease. It’s a belief shared by neuroscientist David J. Linden, author of a 2021 Atlantic article about the lessons that terminal cancer taught him.

I remember reading that raw and eloquent article, entitled “A Neuroscientist Prepares for Death.” Linden recalled his fury and disbelief: at his diagnosis: “I was absolutely white-hot angry at the universe. Heart cancer? Who the hell gets heart cancer?! Is this some kind of horrible metaphor? This is what’s going to take me away from my beloved family, my cherished friends and colleagues? I simply couldn’t accept it. I was so mad, I could barely see.”

He recounted his boundless love for his wife Dena and how they “fell for each other hard” – something that “wasn’t mere ‘chemistry’; it was more akin to particle physics – a revelation of the subatomic properties of love. Dena has uplifted me with her pure and unconditional affection, her kindness, beauty, optimism, and keen intelligence. She is the best wife anyone could want, and she is way better than I deserve. Leaving her behind will be the very hardest part of this whole awful situation.”

Linden also recalled the joy he found in his children, along with his friends and his work. As a neuroscientist, he was struck at how he was able to inhabit two contradictory mental states at the same time – something, he noted, that “runs counter to an old idea in neuroscience that we occupy one mental state at a time.” Even in the face of inarguably awful news, Linden found himself “simultaneously furious at my terminal cancer and deeply grateful for all that life has given me.”

Since then, life has given him yet another reason to be grateful, as he writes in a postscript to the Atlantic’s republication of his story:

In 2021, my oncologist told me that I could expect to die within six to 18 months. That didn’t happen. Now, several years on, I get a CT scan every six months, and so far, the scans have shown that the remnant tumor in my heart wall has not grown since the surgery, nor has it spread to other organs. People ask me why I think I’m still alive, and I respond that I don’t really know, but that I think at least a part of it can be attributed to the deep and unconditional love I receive from my wife, Dena. I don’t say this lightly. I’m not speaking metaphorically or out of some sense of social or spiritual obligation. 

Rather, I’m saying it with all seriousness, as a biomedical researcher. I believe that the positive experiences that surround me, of which Dena’s love is the most salient, are activating my brain in a fashion that ultimately helps suppress the growth and spread of my cancer. I’m both fascinated and encouraged that scientists are beginning to understand the specific biochemical and electrical pathways by which signals flow from the brain to tumors like mine to modulate cancer progression. In fact, my next book, “The Real Science of Mind/Body Medicine” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2027), will examine this very topic.

Here’s hoping we can celebrate with Dr. Linden when his book is published in 2027.