Of Half a Mind

by Bruce M Perrin

  “You’re making this too hard,” replied Worthington, shaking his head and scowling. “Before any work with the Blocker, A.T. recalled about seven items. Now, he was recalling 14. That’s two hemispheres working on one problem.”

  I waited, hoping he would answer my question, but he only glared. “So, you didn’t record how many he recalled with the Blocker turned on?”

  “No,” he said, spitting out the word. “Budget was tight. We didn’t waste the money when the result is obvious.”

  Nicole shifted in her chair and I looked over. She had her head tilted slightly toward Worthington, an eyebrow raised. Was she asking permission to speak? I gave her a slight nod, thinking that we needed to talk later.

  “On the same chart Sue mentioned, it looks like A.T. reached a memory span of 21 items after another 71 hours of work or so. That can’t be two hemispheres each adding their separate, 7-item capacity. Any idea what’s going on?”

  I knew this question was coming, although I didn’t expect Nicole to ask it. Given the way he had been acting, Worthington might explode when such a basic inconsistency was mentioned. Nicole had to know that too.

  But he didn’t explode. He simply said, “An emergent capability.”

  Nicole, Sue, and I traded confused looks, so I asked, “What does that mean?”

  “No one else has been trained as extensively as A.T. using the Neural Activity Blocker,” Worthington said, implying that perhaps others had been trained for shorter periods of time. I needed to ask that question later.

  “So, without that background, we weren’t prepared to test more…let’s say, complex possibilities. But one thing we did notice was that A.T. had an exceptional ability to manipulate numbers in his head. He could look at a list and not only remember it, but also see patterns in it. Or use it in calculations. This mental math ability seemed separate from just recalling the numbers, and if so, these two capabilities might combine to increase his performance.”

  Worthington glanced at his watch, causing me to do the same. It was nearly 4:00 and Laverne had told us that he had another appointment at that hour. We would have to schedule a second meeting if we couldn’t wrap this up in the next few minutes. And frankly, I hoped we could avoid that.

  “You know, there are other ways A.T. could be remembering these lists,” I said, jumping to the central issue in my mind. “I’m sure you’re familiar with various mnemonics that he could have used – things like some type of rhyme, story, or picture.”

  Worthington nodded. “You mean like what S.F. did?” he asked.

  “Yes, like him,” I replied, recognizing the participant’s initials from a landmark, psychological study. “How do you know he’s not doing something like that?”

  For once, Worthington did not look irritated by one of my questions. In fact, he looked pleased, judging from the Cheshire-cat grin on his face. Atwood, on the other hand, looked like he’d taken refuge in daydreaming, his look faraway.

  “You must know the limitation on the mnemonic that S.F. used?” Worthington said.

  “Maybe,” I said, unsure where he was going with this question. “If you mean that his mnemonic only works for numbers, then yes, I know that. Most mnemonics work for only certain types of information.”

  “Correct. A.T. was called away by personal issues shortly after we started our last tests, so the sample is insufficient for formal publication. But in the last few days of the experiment, in place of the standard lists of one-digit numbers, we used lists of letters and lists of nonsense syllables.”

  He pulled two graphs from a desk drawer and held them up. “Simply put, A.T.’s capacity for the letters and the nonsense syllables was only slightly lower than his span for digits. No mnemonic will fit all those types of data. In short, his memory span is approximately three times that of anyone else, because he could use more of his brain than anyone else.”

  Seeing the stunned look on our faces, he smiled smugly and said, “You would do well to accept my conclusions so we can expedite this process. Now, Sebastian and I must depart, as we’re late for the next meeting.”

  We stood, and the women and I managed our surprise enough to say thank you, as Worthington showed us out.

  I sat down in the reception area and jotted a note to myself. I wanted to know how we could contact A.T. Even the strictest protocols covering the use of humans in research allowed participants to be contacted in case of emergencies. Somehow, given the unparalleled results we had been shown, I thought we might eventually reach that point.

  Monday, August 10, 4:09 PM

  We stopped at Laverne’s desk and she gave us an appointment with Worthington for 10:00 the next morning. As we left the building, a wave of heat and humidity hit us – summer in St. Louis.

  “Rather than driving back to the office, do you two have a minute if we go to that Starbucks over there?” I asked, as I nodded down the street. Both women agreed.

  When we got there, Sue and Nicole took seats at a table toward the back, while I ordered a scone. I didn’t want it to look like we were there just for a meeting, which we were.

  “Worthington’s intense, isn’t he?” I said, as I joined them and opened my notebook on the table in front of me.

  Sue let her head droop in an exaggerated manner, then looked up. “That’s not the word I’d use. And what’s with the corpse he brought along? Atwood gives new meaning to the word, wallflower.”

  “Do all your meetings go that way?” asked Nicole.

  “Pretty much sets new standards for me,” I admitted. “And I mean, standards at the low end of pleasant and forthcoming.”

  I glanced at my notes, reviewing what we needed to discuss in the aftermath. I looked up at Nicole. “When Worthington said something about blocking one hemisphere, I thought of the split-brain studies. But you came up with something else. The Wada test? What’s that?”

  I knew I could have searched online, but as quickly as she had made the connection during the meeting, she would know more than enough to satisfy my curiosity. But rather than launching into an explanation, she winced and looked down at the tabletop. Even her shoulders slumped. I was thrown by the body language.

  When she looked up a moment later, she was frowning. “I have to apologize. I shouldn’t have changed the topic. It was just such an unexpected twist, when he described what he was doing.”

  These were the moments when I remembered that the gulf between business and education was vast. In graduate school, teams were rare. Teamwork was so unusual that when it was a requirement, that fact was highlighted in the course description, covered on the syllabus, mentioned during class orientation, and recounted frequently in the meetings leading up to the event. Additionally, it was always accompanied with the statement, ‘we’re teaching you a skill you’ll need on the job’.

  Of course, when the date of the team assignment came, the students didn’t work together. Collaboration started and ended with dividing the work among the members. Maybe they listened to each other’s presentations the day before the professor heard them, but maybe not. It wasn’t that graduate students disliked each other. Rather, they survived by individual accomplishment and so, grew to trust their capabilities above all else. What could you expect?

  For us to be successful, however, Sue, Nicole, and I needed to work together. Nicole couldn’t be sending me glances when she wanted to speak, an issue that was second on my list.

  “I can assure you,” said Sue, “Doc doesn’t want or expect an apology.”

  “Sue’s right,” I said, glad she had given Nicole a reason to believe me even before I spoke. “We represent two distinct bodies of knowledge – Sue and I cover one and you have the other. By yourself. So, you have to get your questions answered when they come up, not later when we’ve all forgotten what we were talking about.”

  It was a dicey policy if there were team members who liked to digress. But Nicole was so far on the other side of this tendency, I had no concerns opening the floor to her.

>   “So, go where your concerns lead you. We’ll consolidate later. I should have said this at our kick-off and I didn’t. For that, I’m the one that needs to apologize. I’m sorry.”

  Nicole looked at me, a slight smile coming to her lips. “OK, thanks. I’ll do my best to hold up my end of the bargain.”

  Nicole took a long breath and released it slowly, her eyes gazing out the Starbucks’ window. Turning back to us, she said, “The Wada test involves delivering an anesthetic – usually sodium amobarbital – to one of the hemispheres of the brain via one of two carotid arteries. The result is that the functions of the anesthetized side are temporarily suppressed, and you can study what’s left in the other. So, you can see why I thought of it when Worthington said he was blocking a hemisphere.”

  “No kidding,” said Sue. “Like you said, Worthington has the equivalent of the Wada, but with electricity instead of drugs. That would mean he doesn’t have to worry about side effects.”

  “True,” said Nicole. “It’s just that we don’t know what risks he’s accepting in place of the ones he’s avoiding.”

  “And we’ll need that answer before we’re done,” I said.

  Nicole nodded, then slid forward on her chair and folded her hands on the table. “These explanations – they’re a two-way street?”

  “Sure. What’s the question?” I asked.

  “Nonsense syllables?” she said, unfolding her hands as if welcoming an explanation.

  “They’re consonant, vowel, consonant combinations, like B-I-V or T-O-R.”

  “Or S-E-X,” said Sue. “No, wait, that’s a word. It’s just that it’s been so long.” She looked off, as if trying to recapture a distant memory.

  I rolled my eyes, then turned back to Nicole. “To study memory, you need something that lacks meaning. Random lists of single digit numbers are an example. Most people don’t see a pattern in 3-7-5-2-4-8. Nonsense syllables are another. Letters get used too, but it’s easier to form them into a word or story. And the meaning from words will help you recall the letters.”

  “You mean like Roy G. Biv,” Nicole said, leaning back in her chair. I’d heard that mnemonic, but from the expression on Sue’s face, she hadn’t. “It’s the first letter of the colors of the visible spectrum,” Nicole explained. “Red, orange, yellow, green, and so on.”

  “Guess you’ve heard of that trick,” I said.

  “Who hasn’t, if you’ve ever had a professor who likes to have you memorize lists,” said Nicole. “Now what about…who was it, S.F., and why that made Worthington’s graphs so surprising to you two. I didn’t quite get that.”

  Sue looked at me, shaking her head. “You probably remember the exact findings, don’t you?”

  “Some, maybe,” I admitted, certain I could recall a few details from the landmark study. I turned to Nicole. “You know that most people can remember a list of about 7 items, right?” Nicole nodded.

  “S.F. could remember lists as long as 79,” I said.

  “Seriously? You could read off 79 random numbers and he could repeat them back? Was he born with this ability?”

  “Nope. He started off recalling about seven numbers, like anyone else. But he developed his own mnemonic to help as the lists got longer. He was an avid runner. So, he took strings of numbers and formed them into stories, mostly about people’s ages, dates, and running times.”

  I paused for a moment, because doing this off the top of my head was tricky. “So, S.F. would take some numbers like 3-2-3-5-9-4-1-2-2-5 and turn them into a story about a 32-year-old running a sub four-minute mile on Christmas Day. Then if he recalled the story, he would recall all 10 numbers.”

  “Well, that pretty much blows the whole you-can-remember-seven-things rule out of the water,” said Nicole.

  “Yes and no,” Sue replied. “People still remember about seven things, but that could be seven single digits, or seven nonsense syllables…”

  “Or seven running stories,” said Nicole, finishing the thought. She tapped her forehead, as if she should have guess this implication. “If those stories all contained 10 numbers, you’re up to 70 digits. But it must have been a lot of work for S.F. to be able to do that consistently.”

  “Yeah, harder than learning Roy G. Biv. I don’t remember the exact number, but he spent weeks working on it.”

  “So, what was that number again?” Nicole asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “3-2-3-5-9-4-1-2-2-5”

  “Not bad,” she said, smiling at me.

  “Well, I cheated a little. Three minutes, 59.4 seconds isn’t just any sub-four-minute mile. It was the time of the first one ever run, which I happen to know. But yeah, the technique’s good, if you practice it…a lot.”

  Nicole raised a hand to her chin, her fingers tapping her lips. “Now I see why you and Sue were so surprised by the results on those other two graphs. If A.T. had learned to use something like ages, running times, and dates, it wouldn’t work on letters or nonsense syllables. He’d be back to recalling seven items…but he wasn’t.”

  “Which means there’s something else going on,” Sue said, “like increasing the brain areas that contribute.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. It was an admission I wouldn’t have made so readily a few days ago, but the evidence was mounting.

  “Well, guys,” said Sue, “I gotta get home or Al will be burning water for dinner. You think it’d be worthwhile meeting here around 9:30 tomorrow? Give us a chance to talk about how to approach Worthington. Other than carefully, that is.”

  After Nicole and I agreed to her idea, Sue said her goodbyes and left. With the phrase, ‘no time like the present’ running through my head, I turned to Nicole. “Care to grab a beer somewhere and we can talk about what we heard today?”

  There was some hesitation, and my mind raced through the possibilities – she prefers wine, or maybe, she’s a teetotaler. Or worse yet, she’s involved with someone. I really knew nothing about her other than she wore no ring, and under the circumstances, I was generating negative possibilities rapid fire.

  “You know, I’m pretty tired,” she said. “That session with Worthington was a bit draining.”

  I was busy formulating something to say to cover my retreat when she said, “I have a six-pack at my apartment. Would you like to come over to my place for a drink?”

  In my usual glib way of accepting an unexpected offer from a fascinating and very attractive woman, I replied, “Sure.” She gave me the address, and after I promised to give her a five-minute head start, she left.

  Monday, August 10, 5:17 PM

  When I knocked on Nicole’s door, she called from somewhere inside, “Come in; door’s open.”

  I entered and walked down a short hallway that led to a living room. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I liked what I saw. The area wasn’t the picture of geometric perfection, with every item aligned precisely on tabletops and books arranged alphabetically on shelves. Neither were there dead goldfish floating in a bowl nor discarded pizza boxes hiding under the sofa.

  The room was simple, with a comfortable, lived-in feel. There were a few pieces of unopened mail and a set of keys on an end table. A light blanket laid across the arm of a loveseat – presumably used more frequently in the winter. The loveseat faced two chairs, with a small, flat screen TV mounted on the wall between them. Behind the chairs was a brick fireplace with an oak mantel. On the mantel and at various spots on the wall were works of art, mostly watercolors. Unless there was another artist named N. Veles, the pictures were hers. I have little artistic talent, but I know what I like. And I liked them.

  The room also reflected an interest in antiques, with an emphasis on old scientific equipment. A microscope from a bygone era, a set of scales under glass, and a set of antique calipers covered tabletops around the room. Other than the loveseat, which was upholstered, the furniture was mission-style oak, reflecting the general age and style of the apartment building, and presumably, her tastes as well.

  The warm,
comfortable feel that was building in my mind was put on hold for a moment, however, when I noticed the two books on her coffee table. The first must have been four-inches thick and had the title of Digital Circuit Analysis and Design. The second was a paperback romance novel with a couple embracing on the cover. With interests and tastes so diverse, Nicole was truly a Renaissance woman.

  Am I out of my league?

  Nicole entered, a beer in each hand, just as I stood up from reading the titles of her books. She had changed since work and looked more relaxed in a pair of cutoff jean shorts and t-shirt. Her legs were lightly tanned and well-toned, most likely the result of miles on the bicycle parked in a corner of the room. “I see you do a little light reading,” I said.

  She glanced at the two volumes. “Yeah, I was really surprised by the depth of character development and the plot twists – they were mind-blowing. You usually don’t expect to find that in a book on digital circuits.”

  I chuckled. “I wouldn’t.”

  She walked over and handed me a beer, a light floral scent reaching my nose. Had she fit a shower into my five-minute delay, or was this the first time we had not been surrounded by the smells of coffee, the street, or industrial cleaner? She looked up at me, her hazel eyes appearing more green than brown.

  “I hope you like dark beer.”

  “I do. And a porter at that,” I said after reading the label. “Pretty much my favorite.”

  She sat in one of the chairs. I took the loveseat across from her, bemoaning the fact that I didn’t know her well enough to pat the space beside me. “Besides reading, what do you like to do?” I asked, expecting the question to lead to a discussion of her art. But she went elsewhere.

  “I suppose that, plus music and movies are my main indoor pastimes. But outside, I like biking and hiking, in that order.”

  “Me too,” I replied, “except I’d have to reverse them. Biking’s great, if you get out on some of the trails in or around St. Louis. I’ve always wanted to ride the entire length….”