My Plastic Brain by Caroline Williams

Author:Caroline Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633883925
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2018-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

SOME BRAIN STUFF: THE BRAIN’S GPS

I got the basic rundown of the hippocampus and other important brain areas back in Berlin from Klaus Gramann, of the Berlin Institute of Technology. I went to see him the day after picking up the belt from Susan—and it worked great in helping me get there. Gramann's office is in a corner of the city that isn’t easy to get to from Neil and Jess's flat, and I needed to take several trains and buses to get there. The night before, I had studied the map and written directions that made use of the belt—things like “Leave train station and head east on the number M45 bus. Go ten stops and then walk north on Marchstrasse.” I would never normally consider adding compass directions like this, so I’m intrigued to see if it helps.

As I walk out of the train station, an M45 bus pulls up at the stop next to me. Normally, with ten minutes to go before an appointment and feeling slightly stressed, I’d jump on the first bus that came and hope for the best, banking on having a fifty-fifty chance of going the right way. This time, though, the belt is buzzing on my back so I can instantly tell that this bus is heading west—the wrong direction. I let it go past, cross the road, and wait patiently for a bus going the other way. I am so pleased I want to tell the person in front of me in the line all about it, but my German isn’t up to it. I content myself with a self-satisfied grin and the knowledge that I probably just saved myself a very late and flustered arrival.

Ten minutes later, when I get off the bus and find myself at a complicated crossroads, I check my notes again. They tell me to head north, so I turn my body until the buzzing is on my belly and stride confidently on. It's so easy! I still arrive a few minutes late but not nearly as late, flustered, and sweaty as I could have been, and so often am. It feels like a whole new world.

Klaus Gramann looks like a scientist as Hollywood might imagine one to be. He's tall, with artfully graying hair raked into a messy quiff, and the kind of laconic smile that reminds me of someone famous that I can’t quite put my finger on. It later clicks that it's Billy Bob Thornton—he's a dead ringer, right down to the matching goatee. His office, too, looks way cooler than your average scientist’s. A model of a skull, holding a USB cable between its teeth, sits on the desk, next to a bottle of red wine that acts as a paperweight on the obligatory pile of scientific papers. In the corner is what looks like a shrink's couch, overlooked by a skeleton wearing a university lab coat and grinning madly as only a skeleton can. He even has scientific gobbledygook written on the blackboard.

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