SAN FRANCISCO — The patients who came into the schizophrenia research lab grew easily confused. They struggled to complete simple tasks. Brandon Chuang, a research assistant just out of college, liked working with them, but found them a bit odd.
Within a year, he would turn out to be one of them.
Just as he was becoming a key member of the lab, Chuang suffered a psychotic break that left him sensing conspiracy at every turn; he was so convinced his computer was being hacked that even a routine update from Dropbox shook him. His thinking, so sharp through high school and college, grew so jumbled that he perceived romantic involvement where there was none and kissed two female colleagues in the lab. At one point, he attacked his own brother.
