Neurratives - A Podcast about Neuroscience in Fiction

Our hosts Nick and Stephen complete the trilogy of movies based on writings of Dr Oliver Sacks, with 2011's The Music Never Stopped. In this film, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles truly are the best medicine, as a severely brain-damaged patient and his estranged father bond over a shared love of music. How well does this movie depict memory and neurological damage? How does it stack up to our previous two Oliver Sacks movies? What on earth does our episode title mean? All this and more in this episode!

"Boy, we're going to struggle for stuff to say," said an idiot, ten minutes into what ended up being a 92-minute podcast episode. Nick and Stephen jump back into the world of neurosurgery and kick off our Brain in a Vat miniseries, with The Man with Two Brains. In this 1983 comedy, Steve Martin plays a brilliant neurosurgeon who falls for a preserved brain, Anne, amidst his tumultuous marriage with the scheming Dolores, played by none other than the voice of Jessica Rabbit.

Chaos ensues when Michael seeks a new body for Anne while dodging Dolores's plots and crossing paths with a notorious serial killer. Join us as we dissect this comedic rollercoaster where love, science, and a dash of the macabre intertwine.

Well we had to get to it at some point. In this episode of Neurratives, Nick and Stephen tackle the first of a yet-unspecified number of episodes that will tackle movies dealing with the myth that humans only use 10% of their brains. We'll be taking a look at 2014's Lucy, directed by Luc Besson, best known for Taken, Leon: The Professional, and The Fifth Element. The titular character played by podcast favorite Scarlett Johansson, is forced into being a drug mule and when she is exposed to an overdose of the drug, she 'unlocks' the rest of her brain. Predictably, things go completely off the rails. What do our two hosts make of the 10% myth and how it's portrayed in this movie? What brand of office chair can survive a 100% unlocked brain-fueled journey through space-time? What happens when an action movie director needs to set a scene during an academic symposium of some kind? All this and more on this episode!

Well it turns out that a musical about a brain-computer interface made it to Broadway a few years ago and of course Stephen and Nick are contractually obligated to review it. In this episode about the 2019 Broadway musical Be More Chill, based on the young-adult novel by Ned Vizzini, our hosts dive into this goofy, very strange musical about a teenager who tries to use an AI BCI called a 'SQUIP' to become popular and the unexpected consequences that follow. What do we have to say about this show's take on BCI? Which one of our hosts hates red Mountain Dew and which one loves it? Why did this show make us feel old? Tune in for all of this and more!

Enough of weird obscure old movies that Stephen digs up from the dregs of IMDB-it's time for a big commercial hit movie! The third-biggest commercial movie ever (as of recording) in fact! That's right, it's time for us to cover Avatar: The Way of Water. In the first Avatar movie, still the highest-grossing movie ever, we saw characters use brain-computer interfaces to remotely operate giant blue genetically-engineered bodies on a planet whose fauna is connected through a planet-wide neural gestalt consciousness. With the first movie laying that foundation, what fun new neuroscience will James Cameron's epic sci-fi sequel cover? Join Nick and Stephen as they talk whales, neurology referral pathways, and the Salt Lake valley east-west blood feud.

The boys are back! After an unintentionally long hiatus, Nick and Stephen return with a discussion of Netflix's JUNG_E, directed by Yeon Sang-Ho (Train to Busan). In this film, a team of scientists struggles to perfect a combat AI using the neural data of a decorated military veteran. We'll explore the implications of this movie's world of loose, permissive neural data protection and connect it to real-world brain-computer interfaces. 

Also, we power rank combat robots. You won't want to miss out.

It's back to the small screen, with Black Mirror season 3, episode 4, 'San Junipero.' Nick and Stephen will dive into a nostalgia-filled technological love story. We'll cover thought-provoking topics such as the merits of neural-controlled virtual reality, bold predictions about speech prosthetics, and how to pronounce 'Nevada.' How will 'San Junipero' stack up to our previous Black Mirror experience? Tune in to find out!

We've been judging these movies on their own merits for too long and now it's time to pit all these pieces of fiction against each other in a battle royale for neuro-cinema supremacy! As we move into the next batch of episodes, we'll be placing what we watch into a ranking system. In preparation for that, this episode we'll be live-generating initial preliminary rankings of everything we've watched so far.

Join Nick and Stephen as we indulge our inner mean girls by labeling, then judging all these movies against each other.

Rankings will be able to be found here and will be updated as new episodes come out:
http://neurrativespodcast.com/power-rankings

It's a special in-person panel episode of Neurratives! In this celebration of our 20th episode, Nick and Stephen have assembled an awesome panel for an episode of neuro-shenanigans and friendly competition. We're joined for a second time by Jessi Mischel, who returns to 'redeem' herself from the Matrix episode (her words, not mine) and for the first time by Alicia Colvin and Spencer Kellis. Our panelists will learn a bit more about each other, sample some ketogenic epilepsy diet recipes, and have discuss neuroethics in brain-computer interfaces. What do you call someone who studies astrocytes? Who will discover an unexpected talent for pronouncing brain regions with a mouthful of marshmallows? What lengths will our panelists go to win our competition? Tune in to find out!

Segment timestamps:

Panelist intros - 1:45

The newlymet game - 7:51

Out-of-context clips - 26:40

Keto epilepsy diet sampling - 49:04

Fiction and neuroethics discussion - 1:05:00

Brainy bunny - 1:27:05

Episode written by Nick Halper and Stephen Hou

Intro music remixed by Nick Halper

Links:

Phosphoenix - https://phosphoenix.nl/

Caltech BCI participant drinks beer w/ BCI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-DD3iUrjSs

BRAIN initiative neuroethics working group - https://braininitiative.nih.gov/about/neuroethics-working-group

Dana Foundation neuroscience and society - https://dana.org/explore-neuroscience/society/

TL;DR:

Summer break for another month or so. EP 20 coming in a month-ish and it will involve multiple neuroscience friends!

It's our first psychiatric disorder focused episode of Neurratives, as we go into the captivity closet with the M. Night Shyamalan-directed Split. This 'stealth sequel' to Unbreakable (2000) follows three girls abducted for mysterious purposes by a man with dissociative identity disorder (colloquially known as multiple personality disorder). James MacAvoy carries large parts of this movie with his performance of a man with 23 distinct personalities, but how accurate is this depiction? Tune in and let's find out!

This episode, Nick and Stephen take a look at what indie filmmakers think a brain-computer interface might look like with 2018's Upgrade. In this film, a car accident and attempted murder victim seeks revenge with the assistance of a chip that restores movement to his paralyzed body. It's basically John Wick but with neuroscience...right? Join us for this wild, visceral movie with the most ridiculous one-liner that we've encountered in this podcast---and considering we've covered James Bond and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, that's quite the accomplishment. 

It's our first musical episode of Neurratives! Sort of. This week, we're taking a look at season 6, episode 6 of the medical sitcom Scrubs, 'My Musical.' In this episode of the show that pioneered the single-camera, laugh track-less, dramedy sitcom style, an unknown neurological disorder causes a patient to hear the entire cast as singing in theater showtune style.

Nick is a complete musical theater newbie, while Stephen has been a wannabe theater snob for years. How accurate is this show's depiction of musical hallucinations? Has this put Nick off of musicals forever? Why are we doing a musical in the first place? These questions answered, and more on this episode of Neurratives!

It's part 2 of our journey into the neuro-adjacent filmography of Paul Verhoeven with 1990's Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger! At long last, Stephen got to make Nick sit through this utterly absurd sci-fi classic about a construction who goes to have memories of an amazing Martian vacation implanted into his mind, with some unexpected consequences. Artificial memories, planetary colonial insurgencies, and copious amounts of gaslighting--this movie is a lot, but where does it stand in the pantheon of memory-themed films we've covered on this podcast? Tune in to find out! 

This week it's back to brain-computer interfaces with 1987's RoboCop! We'll encounter a (mostly) full body motor prosthetic, party down with a dead guy in the room, and watch a cyborg BCI policeman try to clean up the mean streets of dystopian Detroit. Stephen tries to advocate the merits of garbage, while Nick's music and film-making experience come in handy.

It's back to the work of Dr Oliver Sacks for episode 14, as Nick and Stephen dive into 1999's At First Sight. In this adaptation of Dr Sacks's essay 'To See and Not See,' a blind Val Kilmer has his sense of sight surgically restored, but finds himself with a major neurological impairment - he is unable to make sense of anything he can see. The movie gets points for its representation of visual agnosia and Nineties nostalgia, but what else does it have to offer? Does it live up to its spiritual predecessor, Awakenings?

Note: This was recorded in October 2021, but for various reasons, wasn't released until now, so it has the format of the previous recurring segments. 

It's back to the world of animation, as we cover 1982's 'The Secret of NIMH,' about cognitively-enhanced lab rats that escaped from the research facilities of the National Institutes of Mental Health. Some uncomfortable questions about animal research ethics lead Nick and Stephen to have The Talk and have what might be the closest thing to an actual serious moral discussion in the show's history. 

What is the scientific basis for enhanced intelligence? How many prominent all-women's liberal arts colleges can Stephen name? Why is Nick banned from Oxford University?  These questions and more on this episode of Neurratives!

A non-negligible amount of wine was consumed during recording of The Matrix episode, resulting in the magnificent three-hour, inebriated trashfire that was the original raw recording. Lots of shenanigans were had--here are some highlights that didn't make the final cut.

It's time to enter The Matrix! And what better way to send off 2021 than having our first guest? Dr Jessi Mischel joins Nick and Stephen for a two-and-a-half hour (!!!) descent into wine drunkenness where we cover neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, and the staggering inefficiency of humanity as a power source. Nick reveals cringy details about his past, Jessi gets very upset at percutaneous connectors, and Stephen breaks from excessive laughter.

Music: 'Blippy Trance' - Kevin MacLeod

Bond, James Bond -- it's 1999's The World Is Not Enough, as Agent 007 has to stop a ruthless terrorist that cannot feel pain due to a bullet in the brain. Just go with us on this -- the neuroanatomy and neuroscience involved here are super cool. Join our hosts as Nick experiences a James Bond film for the first (!!!) time and Stephen struggles to explain certain exceptionally silly Bond-film tropes to him.

Music - 'Blippy Trance,' Kevin MacLeod

TL;DR:

Episodes through the rest of November and December will be every 3-4 weeks rather than every two weeks. Plan is to be back to every two weeks in mid-January. 

We'll be releasing The Matrix (with our first guest!!!!) on December 22nd, the same day that The Matrix Resurrections releases! That episode was incredibly fun to record and we're looking forward to sharing it.

It's a special double feature episode of Neurratives! Nick and Stephen tackle the seminal 1995 cyberpunk anime film Ghost in the Shell as well as its 2017 Hollywood live-action adaptation and happen to stumble across a bit of neuroscience in a sea of philosophy and metaphysics. 

The anime defined a number of cyberpunk tropes and influenced tons of filmmakers, but does it hold up? The live-action adaptation...exists. Does it secretly rule? Let's find out!

Music - 'Blippy Trance', Kevin MacLeod

Want to listen to two millennial men talk about the neuroscience of a romantic comedy for 84 minutes? Of course you do. This episode, Nick and Stephen take a look at 2004's '50 First Dates', where Adam Sandler must continually re-woo a heavily amnesiac Drew Barrymore.  Join us as we take a deep dive into the various types of memory, discuss the basis of modern memory research, and wax nostalgic about the early-2000s (spoiler: this movie is PEAK early-2000s everything).

Also, to everyone thinking, 'REEEEEEEEE, MEMENTO DID IT BETTER!!!11!!!1!!': We know. We'll get to it at some point.

More reading about Patient HM:
Milner B, Corkin S, Teuber HL. Further analysis of the hippocampal amnesic syndrome: 14-year follow-up study of H.M. Neuropsychologia. 1968;6(3)

Squire, LR. The Legacy of Patient H.M. for Neuroscience. Neuron. 2009;61(1).

Case report of Patient FL, the 'real-life' 50 First Dates:
Smith CN, Frascino JC, Kripke DL, McHugh PR, Treisman GJ, Squire LR. Losing memories overnight: a unique form of human amnesia. Neuropsychologia. 2010;48(10)

Music: 'Blippy Trance' - Kevin MacLeod

This. Movie. Rules. In Episode 6, Nick and Stephen take a look at 2013's Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo Del Toro. If you like giant robots punching equally-giant interdimensional monsters in the face, then we have great news for you! If you like accurate depictions of neuroscience or brain-computer interfaces in your movies about giant robots punching equally-giant interdimensional monsters in the face--well, tune in to find out.

Further reading on the flight simulator brain-computer interface we briefly mention:
Kryger M, Wester B, Pohlmeyer EA, Rich M, John B, Beaty J, McLoughlin M,  Boninger M, Tyler-Kabara EC. Flight simulation using a Brain-Computer  Interface: A pilot, pilot study. Exp Neurol. 2017 Jan;287(Pt 4):473-478.  doi: 10.1016/j.expneurol.2016.05.013. Epub 2016 May 16. PMID: 27196543.

Music: 'Blippy Trance' - Kevin MacLeod

This episode, it's a deep dive into 1990's Awakenings and Robin Williams isn't funny in this medical drama. Except when he definitely is. Nick & Stephen take a journey into the world of clinical neurology in this adaptation of Dr Oliver Sacks's best-selling 1973 memoir of the same name. Robert De Niro co-stars alongside Robin Williams in this film about the extraordinary results of a 1969 clinical trial of L-dopa in comatose patients.

More reading:

Sacks OW, Kohl M, Schwartz W, Messeloff C.  Side-effects of L-dopa in postencephalic parkinsonism. Lancet. 1970 May  9;1(7654):1006. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(70)91137-2. PMID: 4191927.

Note: There's two f-bombs in this episode. Normally I edit those out, or bleep them if they come as part of our commentary. However, in this case, they're used in direct quotes of the only profanity in the film, which occurs at kind of an important part of the film, so I've left it in there. Hopefully your virgin ears won't be too traumatized.

It's 1982 and Clint Eastwood must steal an advanced mind-controlled Soviet fighter jet or else America loses the Cold War! In this episode, Nick and Stephen dive into 1982's Firefox as they examine what the '80s thought a brain-computer interface would look like and try to relate it to real science. Can Clint Eastwood save democracy from communism? Just how useful is the brain-computer interface in this film? How does this movie stack up to the gold standard of jet fighter movies, Top Gun? Spoilers: we're on a sigh-way to the danger zone.

Note: We briefly mention a UCSF speech prosthesis study at the end of the episode. At time of recording, this group had not published yet, but serendipitously, they published the following paper in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.

Moses DA, Metzger SL, Liu JR, Anumanchipalli GK, Makin JG, Sun PF,  Chartier J, Dougherty ME, Liu PM, Abrams GM, Tu-Chan A, Ganguly K, Chang  EF. Neuroprosthesis for Decoding Speech in a Paralyzed Person with  Anarthria. N Engl J Med. 2021 07 15; 385(3):217-227.

More about P300 event-related potentials here:
Sellers EW, Krusienski DJ, McFarland DJ, Vaughan TM, Wolpaw JR. A P300  event-related potential brain-computer interface (BCI): the effects of  matrix size and inter stimulus interval on performance. Biol Psychol.  2006 Oct;73(3):242-52. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.04.007. Epub 2006  Jul 24. PMID: 16860920.

Music: 'Blippy Trance' - Kevin MacLeod

This episode Nick and Stephen dive into Disney Pixar's 'Inside Out'. What does Pixar get right about the brain? Do we really have a flow of memory orbs constantly running inside our heads? And most importantly: does this movie manage to emotionally crush us at some point?

The debut episode of Neurratives! This episode Nick and Stephen discuss the VISOR visual prosthetic worn by Geordi La Forge in 7 seasons and 1 movie of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We also compare it to a currently-available visual prosthetic and talk about some recent research in visual prosthetics.

Links:
Neurratives website: https://neurrativespodcast.com/
Argus® II Retinal Prosthesis System:  https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/

Paper(s):
Chen X, Wang F, Fernandez E, Roelfsema PR. Shape perception via a  high-channel-count neuroprosthesis in monkey visual cortex. Science.  2020 Dec 4;370(6521):1191-1196.

Music:
'Blippy Trance' by Kevin MacLeod

Filmmakers and writers don't always understand neuroscience - but we do! Kind of, anyways. Each episode, neurotech industry veterans Stephen Hou and Nick Halper discuss a work of fiction that involves neuroscience in some way. Nick and Stephen will dig into the plot, unpack the science/technology, and if necessary, mercilessly roast the filmmakers for scientific or cinematic missteps.