Like an episode of the popular television series “House,” the book presents mysterious medical cases from the behemoth Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The 10th floor holds the neurology inpatient ward, a place where, as Dr. Ropper and his co-author, Brian David Burrell, put it, “the strangest and most challenging cases are sent to be sorted out.”

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Take Vincent, a middle-aged grump who is suddenly smiley, sweet and spewing gibberish after a company softball game. Based on his brain scans, several young residents suggest the culprit is a tumor, or maybe a stroke or seizures. But Dr. Ropper isn’t convinced. He talks to Vincent’s wife, and discovers that her husband’s problems began with a headache and fever. Aha, an infection! Herpes encephalitis would explain all his symptoms. And sure enough, after taking an antiviral medication, Vincent is soon back to his irritable self.

Then there are the contrasting cases of Gordon and Walter, older men who are both in nebulous states of confusion. The only way to understand a damaged brain, Dr. Ropper contends, is to engage “the person inside.” After systematic questioning, he learns that Gordon’s mind is a jumble; when asked where he lives, Gordon responds with nonsensical phrases about talking dogs and best days. This type of confusion has no internal logic, which means a poor prognosis. Walter’s mind also wanders far from our reality — he believes, for example, that Dr. Ropper scored a winning touchdown for Boston University in 1962. But it has its own reality with its own consistent rules. This is psychosis, and good news because it can potentially be reversed.

Dr. Ropper’s authoritative voice is often funny, but can also be cutting. The book includes a host of cases of hysteria (or conversion disorder, if unlike the narrator you prefer the euphemism), perhaps because it is one of the most common conditions a neurologist deals with. There is a teenager who pretends to be blind, and a woman intent on giving her young daughter pain medications even though she has no pain. There are also “baloney” cases, such as a couple convinced that electrical outlets make their bodies buzz. Dr. Ropper has little patience for these patients. He tells the couple they might be magnetized, and suggests they float in their swimming pool to see if they point north.

Fans of Dr. House will notice more than a few similarities to Dr. Ropper, who’s at once insufferably arrogant and charmingly mischievous. When the ward is slow, Dr. Ropper encourages residents to go out to the sidewalk and round up interesting cases — “anyone who can’t walk straight.” He jokes of having doubts about one of his residents because of her “needlessly exotic” clogs and leggings; another trainee uses “L.A. street slang” and “would have looked more at home on ‘Melrose Place.’ ”