
In this episode, first aired in 2012, we have two stories of brains pushed off-course. We relive a surreal day in the life of a young researcher hijacked by her own brain, and hear from a librarian experiencing a bizarre and mysterious set of symptoms that she called “gravitational anarchy.” Special thanks to Sarah Montague and Ellen Horn, as well as actress Hope Davis, who read Rosemary Morton’s story. And the late Berton Roueché, who wrote that story down. EPISODE CREDITS: Produced by - Brenna FarrellOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Tim Howard and Douglas Smith EPISODE CITATIONS: Books - Berton Roueché’s story about Rosemary Morton,”Essentially Normal” first appeared in the New Yorker in 1958 and was later published by Dutton in a book called "The Medical Detectives." Signup for our newsletter. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is suppor...
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Lulu Miller
Listener Support WNYC Studios hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Lulu. I'm here with my brain. You are there with yours. And usually, you know, you and your brain have a kind of quiet agreement to just get along enough to go through your day. But every now and then you and your brain fall out of agreement and then you can slip into a kind of disorienting tilt, a whirly place. Well, today we have two stories for you about just that. People walking around with a new kind of vertigo. These stories come from the archives and we're calling today's show Vertigo. Go, go. So here we go.
Jad Abumrad
Wait, you're listening.
Robert Krulwich
See? All right.
Lulu Miller
Okay.
Robert Krulwich
All right.
Sponsor Announcer
You're listening to radio from wnyc.
Jad Abumrad
Rewind.
Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.
Robert Krulwich
I'm Robert Krulwich.
Jad Abumrad
This is Radiolab podcast and today on the podcast, a show about brains. Yes, a short time ago, we got an email from a listener in San Francisco.
Robert Krulwich
Something odd had happened to her and she wanted to share it with us.
Jad Abumrad
I missed. I didn't hit the record button fast enough. Could you just tell me your name again? And the.
Liza Schoenfeld
My name is Liza Schoenfeld and I'm a research technician at the Gladstone Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.
Jad Abumrad
Now, Liza is just getting started with her scientific career.
Liza Schoenfeld
Finished my undergraduate degree about a year and a half ago.
Jad Abumrad
And this story takes place as she was about to take that next step after college and apply to grad schools.
Robert Krulwich
And the star of our story, other than, of course, Liza herself is a little mischievous. Part of her brain, well, everyone's brain.
Liza Schoenfeld
Part of your brain called the basal ganglia.
Jad Abumrad
Basal ganglia, which at the time she'd been Studying.
Liza Schoenfeld
So basal ganglia is a fairly large part of your brain.
Jad Abumrad
It's actually this big hunk deep in.
Liza Schoenfeld
The center, and it's responsible for controlling and coordinating movement.
Robert Krulwich
When I move my neck back and forth, am I using my basal ganglia?
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
When I make an expression in my face, am I using my basal ganglia?
Liza Schoenfeld
Definitely.
Jad Abumrad
What about if I'm reading the New Yorker?
Liza Schoenfeld
I don't think so.
Robert Krulwich
Apologies to the New Yorker and its employees.
Jad Abumrad
Point is, this part of your brain is really basic.
Robert Krulwich
And at the lab where she was working, they had figured out this particular.
Liza Schoenfeld
Basal ganglia trick using this really cool technology called optogenetics.
Jad Abumrad
What they'd done is they'd found a way to take a mouse, thread a little fiber optic cable through its skull, deep into its brain, into its basal.
Liza Schoenfeld
Ganglia, so that when you shine a blue laser. Literally, we just shine lasers into mouse brains.
Jad Abumrad
They could actually turn its basal ganglia, or parts of it, on or off.
Robert Krulwich
And this is in a live mouse?
Liza Schoenfeld
This is in a live mouse. So we have these really cool videos showing a mouse running around, having a great mouse time. You turn the light on, we can.
Robert Krulwich
Get him to freeze in mid stride.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
So you hit the laser, and boom, the mouse stops.
Liza Schoenfeld
Mouse is like this.
Jad Abumrad
So use light to, like, puppetize the mouse.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yes.
Jad Abumrad
If you're this mouse, no matter how hard you try, move feet, move as long as that light is on.
Liza Schoenfeld
Come on, Foof.
Jad Abumrad
You can't do it. Liza is holding the strings.
Robert Krulwich
Not exactly. It turns out she doesn't get to play with the laser that much.
Liza Schoenfeld
I'm kind of like I'm the bottom of the totem pole. So I do a lot of pipetting.
Jad Abumrad
It's like, where you squirt liquid from one tube to another.
Liza Schoenfeld
I'm working on my pipetting skills these days.
Jad Abumrad
Get the thumb muscles up.
Liza Schoenfeld
Oh, I could beat anyone in the thumb wrestling competition right now.
Jad Abumrad
So at a certain point, she was like, enough of this time for me to apply to grad school.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah. I applied to five University of California, San Diego, University of Washington in Seattle, ucsf, Rockefeller University, and Harvard.
Jad Abumrad
Okay, so you're going big. Yeah.
Liza Schoenfeld
Go big or go home, Right?
Jad Abumrad
Exactly.
Robert Krulwich
So she heads off to her first interview.
Liza Schoenfeld
University of Washington went great. I loved it. Went down to UCSD in San Diego. It's a beautiful place, great scientists. It's actually the largest neuroscience community in the world.
Jad Abumrad
So far, so good.
Robert Krulwich
Did you ever go back to San Francisco, where we are now?
Jad Abumrad
This is where things get strange.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yes. So my last interview My very last interview was at ucsf.
Jad Abumrad
And she says, about a week before that interview, I got really sick.
Liza Schoenfeld
Pretty severe nausea. I wasn't really able to eat or do anything.
Jad Abumrad
Throwing up?
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah. Oh, all sorts of. I don't know. I had some bad dim sum the weekend before. That could have been it.
Robert Krulwich
Yeah, that's it. So she goes to the doctor, he gives her some pills to fight the nausea.
Liza Schoenfeld
And then the next day was my interview. Friday was my interview. So I went. You know, there's a nice introduction. They give you breakfast.
Jad Abumrad
At this point, she's pretty familiar with the whole routine.
Liza Schoenfeld
Generally, the way these interviews are structured is that we talk a little bit about my research in dopamine and the basal ganglia and these.
Jad Abumrad
They tell her about their work.
Liza Schoenfeld
I have to think of a couple witty questions. I ask my questions.
Jad Abumrad
Anyhow, she's raring to go, and she heads in to meet her first basal gangliatician of the day.
Liza Schoenfeld
And he studies. One of the things he studies is.
Jad Abumrad
Dopamine in the basal ganglia.
Liza Schoenfeld
He studies stuff that's a little bit more molecular than what I know. But we had a good conversation about dopamine. And at this point in the day, I was feeling okay.
Robert Krulwich
No nausea.
Liza Schoenfeld
Then I went to my second interview, which is this woman that I was so excited to talk to. Her name is Allison Dope, and she's pretty well known.
Robert Krulwich
Her name is Alison Dope.
Liza Schoenfeld
Allison Dope.
Robert Krulwich
Wow. And she studies dopamine.
Liza Schoenfeld
She studies songbirds.
Jad Abumrad
Songbirds, which is what Liza really wanted to study.
Liza Schoenfeld
So birds have basal ganglias, too.
Jad Abumrad
So she's pretty fired up.
Liza Schoenfeld
And kind of at the beginning of that interview, my. My face started to feel a little bit strange. And I was wearing glasses that day. So what I thought was happening was that my glasses were. You know, your glasses get loose, and they kind of start to slip down your nose, and you have to kind of tighten the muscles around your ears to try and keep your glasses on. So we were talking. I just kept on feeling like, God, why can't I stop tightening that? It was kind of got to the point where it started to distract me, but I felt okay. Then we went to lunch. And this was a lunch with all the current students and a lot of the current faculty and all the prospective students. And at lunch, I remember on the walk to lunch, my head just started spontaneously turning to the right, like. Like I would be trying to sit here and face you, and I would just turn over here and face Robert.
Jad Abumrad
That's such a funny thing. Was Your neck moving. And you're like, no, neck. Don't do that neck.
Liza Schoenfeld
That's exactly what was happening. I was trying to send signals to my neck being like, all right, sitting here having lunch with an important professor. Why don't you just face him, talk to him? And instead I'm just turning over here, turning over here, turning over here.
Robert Krulwich
Oh, you're turning a fairly wide arc.
Jad Abumrad
Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
You are turning away from the professor.
Liza Schoenfeld
So I remember at one point in lunch turning my chair like this so.
Robert Krulwich
I could see you're trying to rotate.
Liza Schoenfeld
Toss him.
Robert Krulwich
A permanent sidelong glance.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah.
Jad Abumrad
But she figured, must just be a cramp or something.
Liza Schoenfeld
And I'm kind of thinking, oh, okay. So I slept funny last night. I must have slept on a weird angle on my pillow. Now I'm having a neck cramp. My glasses are loose. I just gotta tighten the glasses.
Jad Abumrad
Yeah. Everything under control.
Liza Schoenfeld
So then I, after lunch, was going to go to my third interview was with Alison Dope's husband, who also studies songbirds. So he's familiar with the basal ganglia too.
Jad Abumrad
They meet up to walk over to his office together.
Liza Schoenfeld
And so I explained to him on the walk over, I think I'm having neck cramps. Would it be possible maybe to try and get a hot pad?
Robert Krulwich
He says, sure, I may track one down.
Liza Schoenfeld
But on the walk, not only now does my neck start turning to the right, but it's snapping itself back involuntarily. Yeah, my head's snapping back like that.
Jad Abumrad
So you're suddenly your eyes are pointed up at the sky.
Liza Schoenfeld
And then as I'm talking to him, I'm realizing that I can't control my eyebrows from. From raising pretty tightly. So I look.
Jad Abumrad
Like you're doing right now.
Liza Schoenfeld
Like I'm doing right now.
Robert Krulwich
So you're in a state of deep surprise to read your teeth.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yes, Constant deep surprise.
Robert Krulwich
High eyebrows.
Liza Schoenfeld
I can't stop it. I look surprised at everything I'm saying, and I can't stop it. So after the eyebrows start and I can't pull them back down, then the mouth, then all this area starts to go.
Robert Krulwich
The lower face.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yes.
Jad Abumrad
What is it doing?
Liza Schoenfeld
It turns into this really twisted, painful, grimacing smile.
Jad Abumrad
Would you mind demonstrating? I'll demo it.
Liza Schoenfeld
I'll demo it. Okay. So I've got. The neck is like this crane back.
Jad Abumrad
The eyebrows are like this total surprise. His is a little bit like this crazy Frankenstein face.
Robert Krulwich
This is not obviously the best demeanor for a graduate interview.
Liza Schoenfeld
No. Yeah, it's not going well at that point.
Robert Krulwich
Now is Michael now Noticing that something is.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah, I think at that point he thought I was just really excited to be talking about neuroscience. And I'm just trying to think, okay, mouth, like, try and just calm down a little bit. And it was pretty painful, too. I mean, it was like, imagine like a Charlie Horse in your face. Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
But she gets through the interview.
Liza Schoenfeld
I actually do okay. You know, he asks me tough questions about science, and I can answer them, I think. And I leave the interview. And then I'm met by the woman who's the head of the admissions weekend.
Jad Abumrad
And she took one look at Liza.
Liza Schoenfeld
And she said, you know, I don't know if you should do the rest of your interviews. And with her is my student host.
Jad Abumrad
And Liza decides, all right, let me just call my dad.
Liza Schoenfeld
Just to say, dad, I'm in the middle of my interview, and something kind of funny is happening with my face. I can't control it. And while I'm talking to him, I lose control of my mouth and my tongue. So I can't. I can kind of talk, but it's. It's pretty bad. Pretty bad.
Robert Krulwich
Is your dad a doctor?
Liza Schoenfeld
No. Imagine your kid calling you, being like, I'm losing control of my face. And as they're telling you that, I started to think something's really wrong. And then my student host comes rushing back in, running, and he looks at me, and he tries to put on a calm face, and he says, so now we need to go to the emergency room.
Jad Abumrad
So they throw into a taxi.
Liza Schoenfeld
And in the taxi, it went from I can't control my mouth to a complete. I mean, a complete mouth palsied and a torque complete. I did not look good. As we're pulling up to the emergency room is when my throat started tightening up.
Jad Abumrad
They rush her inside, and they have.
Liza Schoenfeld
Me in a gurney in a room in the back of the ER surrounded by six people within two minutes, doctors swarming all around, an oxygen mask, EKG leads all over my chest. They do an iv, and as she's.
Robert Krulwich
Lying there on the table, she's thinking, like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I control my throat? Why can't I control my body?
Liza Schoenfeld
And I just. I couldn't. I remember frantically sending messages like, you gotta cut this out now.
Jad Abumrad
But she wasn't in control. And it turned out that while she was going from interview to interview to interview, talking about how her lab had taken these little miceys and seized control of their basal ganglia, the Compazine that.
Liza Schoenfeld
I took, that nausea drug was actually affecting. Dopamine systems in my basal ganglia.
Jad Abumrad
In other words, that drug had been doing to her pretty much what she'd been doing to those mice.
Liza Schoenfeld
1 to 2% of people who take Compazine, they can have what's called an acute dystonia, which is what happened to.
Jad Abumrad
Me during all those interviews.
Liza Schoenfeld
And the crazy thing is, the guy that I talked to first in the morning was the molecular dopamine guy. You know, how does dopamine get packed in the vesicles? How does it get released? And it wasn't until I started talking with the more systems level people who studied the behavioral output of the basal ganglia that I started to have behavioral deficits in my basal ganglia.
Jad Abumrad
Wow.
Robert Krulwich
So your basal ganglia are testing the San Francisco docs, and they are failing in ischiatiss.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
Did you get into San Francisco State? Ucsf are ucsf.
Liza Schoenfeld
No.
Robert Krulwich
No. Oh, damn it.
Liza Schoenfeld
Basal ganglia.
Jad Abumrad
We should probably tell everybody that Liza's obviously doing okay. Back in the er, when the doctors finally figured out what was going on, they just gave her some Benadryl, of all things.
Liza Schoenfeld
And actually, within 20 minutes, I was feeling a lot better.
Jad Abumrad
She could breathe, her face had unclenched. And when we asked her, how has this little adventure changed you? She said, well, I'm still working with those mice. Because when we talked to her, grad school hadn't started yet. And now when I go into that room with a little laser, I go.
Liza Schoenfeld
In now and I just really empathize with them.
Robert Krulwich
Come on, little Casper. This will just be for a couple of minutes.
Jad Abumrad
You can do it.
Liza Schoenfeld
Yeah, I'm thinking a lot about that.
Robert Krulwich
Liza Schoenfeld is Now a proud PhD candidate at the University of Washington.
Jad Abumrad
And thanks to Brenna Farrell for production help on that story. I'm Jan Abumran.
Robert Krulwich
I'm Robert Krulvich.
Jad Abumrad
We'll be back.
Lulu Miller
All right, here I am.
Jad Abumrad
Ready to.
Lulu Miller
Ready to do it. My name is Annie McKeown, and I am a senior producer at this show, which basically just means that I, you know, spend many hours banging my head against, you know, the computer screen, but, you know, lovingly banging. The best part of my job is creating an immersive scene so you can, like, see it in your mind and feel it in your heart, and it doesn't even really matter what it is. It could be what it would be like to talk to a Neanderthal at a bar or a black hole moving through the earth. If it's done right, I can take you by the hand and lead you into this magical world that surprises you. If you enjoy venturing into these new worlds we create here at Radiolab, the best way to support us is by becoming a Lab member. To learn more about the Lab and our exclusive membership Perks, go to Radiolab.org join Radiolab.org join and thank you.
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Jad Abumrad
I'm Jad Abumrad.
Robert Krulwich
I'm Robert Krilwick.
Jad Abumrad
This is Radiolab and Today Times, when you and your brain have a falling out, so to speak.
Robert Krulwich
Okay, so Liza's disagreement with her brain didn't last very long. It was over within really, less than a day.
Jad Abumrad
Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
But there are people who get into fusses with their heads that last longer. So here's a bigger, badder and broader story.
Jad Abumrad
Also, a true story comes from an essay written many years ago by a guy named Burton Ruscha, who's this great. I don't know, how would you describe him?
Robert Krulwich
Burton Ruscha? He was a great essayist. Journalism essayist.
Jad Abumrad
Yeah. And this essay was published in 1958 in the New Yorker. And it's kind of an interesting essay because it's essentially one long quote from this woman that Burdon interviewed, Rosemary Morton. It reads like a novel even though it's nonfiction. So we asked an actress who's been in some movies, Hope Davis, to read excerpts from Rosemary's story. The story begins on a normal night. Rosemary's at home with her husband, Frank, and everything's fine for the moment.
I'd been home about an hour. Dinner was ready and waiting in the oven. And I was sitting at the piano, not really playing, just amusing myself. That's something I often do at the end of the day. It helps me relax. My husband was in the kitchen making us a cocktail, which is another Morton custom. We usually have a drink or two before dinner. So everything was quite ordinary and normal until Frank came in with the drinks. I got up to join him on the sofa, and as I did, as I started across the room, I felt the floor sort of shake. Good heavens, I said. What was that? Frank just looked at me. His face was a perfect blank. He made some remark about old buildings stretching and settling, and handed me my drink.
So she doesn't really think too much of this, because it was very momentary.
Robert Krulwich
Okay.
Jad Abumrad
But a week later, she's at work. She's actually in the library because she's a librarian. She's at her desk.
I worked at my desk for about an hour. And it was heaven. So quiet, so peaceful. Then I got up to get a book from the stacks or a drink of water or something, and it happened. The floor gave a shake and sank. It went down and up, just one lurch, maybe a little more pronounced than the first time, and then everything was back to normal. Except for my state of mind. I didn't know what to think. The best I could do Was tell myself that this was an old building too. It was built around 19, 1900.
So that was your sense at first, just old buildings.
It never occurred to me that there might be any other explanation.
But then, over the next few days, very odd things begin to happen.
I don't know how to describe it, but I had the feeling that my sense of touch was getting more and more acute, especially in the soles of my feet. I could feel little tremors that other people couldn't. I didn't tell Frank until the middle of the following week. On Wednesday night, to be exact. By then I had to. I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. There was something wrong with me. There just wasn't any word for the awful sensations I'd been having. The floor shaking feeling was only one of them. I don't know how many times that happened over the weekend, seven or eight at least. But even that began to have a different feeling. At first, the floor had moved or sagged. As a whole, it still did. Only now I could feel another movement too. A kind of counterpoint. Sometimes it was as if I were sinking into the floor. The room would tilt and I'd take a step and the floor was like snow. It would give under my foot and I would sink. And other times it was just the reverse of floor would rise up to meet me. By then, it wasn't simply the floor that moved. When the floor tilted, the walls of the room tilted with it and the ceiling. I mean, the shape of the room never changed, only its position in space.
So Rosemary went to see her doctor. Her doctor sent her to some specialists and they ran some tests. And then a short while later, she went back to her doctor to get the results.
He'd read me their conclusions and they were all the same. They even used the same phrase, impression. Essentially normal. I'll never forget that phrase. Normal. Essentially normal. It sounds so reassuring, so comforting. But it isn't. At least it wasn't to me. It was terrifying.
After this diagnosis or non diagnosis, things really take a turn. Fast forward a few months.
There were times in March and early April when I was absolutely certain I was going to die. But my reaction to death was peculiar. I don't remember feeling afraid. All I remember is an overwhelming sense of urgency. So little time, so little done, so much I wanted to do. I dragged Frank to the theatre more than once, and I never thought of refusing when he suggested the Philharmonic or the Metropolitan. My response to music had never been so complete. I spent hours listening to records. I'd play Some old favorite, like Beecham conducting Haydn's London Symphony. And it was amazing. It seemed to me that I could hear the inner structure more clearly than ever before. So the idea of a dinner and a concert, it wasn't at all unusual. My only mistake was to take that dreadful underground passage. It was raining, and I was in a hurry. But even so, I should have realized. When I did, it was too late. The passage was jammed with commuters, shoving and pushing and surging toward me. But I didn't dare turn back. The floor was beginning to wobble, and I knew if I tried to swing around, it would tip me head over heels. All I could do was go on. The traffic was still all against me. People kept looming up, towering up. They came charging at me like giants. And then I felt something right out of a nightmare. I was almost at the end of the passage when I felt the movement change. It was as if someone had pulled a lever. There was a little jolt, and the floor was moving very slowly backward down the passage. I was walking on a treadmill. Only for a minute, though. Then I reached the stairs. I drove myself up to the lobby and collapsed in a chair. I was jelly. From early April, I began to move in a different world. I was conscious of a new dimension, a new plane. I had a new relationship to space. My legs, my arms, my face, my whole body felt different. It had no permanent shape. It changed by the minute. I seemed to be completely at the mercy of some outside force, some atmospheric pressure. I was amorphous. My left leg would seem to lengthen, or my right arm or my neck, or one whole side of me would double or treble in size. And yet that doesn't fully describe it. There were times when the force seemed to be the rotation of the Earth. I would have the feeling that I was vertically aligned with the Earth's axis. I could feel a sort of winding movement start up inside me. Then one of my legs would begin to shorten as if it were an anchor being drawn slowly up by a winch. The other leg would dangle. After a minute, the winch would shift. It would engage the dangling leg and just as slowly bring it up to match the other.
Robert Krulwich
This feels like some kind of a nightmare cartoon of some kind.
Jad Abumrad
Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
So? So what? What is it? What is wrong with her?
Jad Abumrad
Well, after months of this, at the end of the essay, she does finally learn that this condition she has has a name.
My trouble was a disturbance of the internal ear called labyrinthitis.
Robert Krulwich
Labyrinth?
Jad Abumrad
The suffix itis meant inflammation, swelling. So the meaning of Labyrinthitis, as a word, was simply an inflammation of the oral labyrinth.
Robert Krulwich
You know, I think people in science and medicine love to give big fat names to. I don't know.
Jad Abumrad
Well, actually, this condition, you should know, goes by another name.
Robert Krulwich
What?
Jad Abumrad
Vertigo.
Robert Krulwich
Oh.
Jad Abumrad
That's why I like the story. Because, like, I didn't know. I mean, like, I always thought of Vertigo. Like from the movie.
Robert Krulwich
Yeah.
Jad Abumrad
Like you're on the stairs and you're like, woo. Like it's just a thing with heights, you know, like that's what it was in the Hitchcock film. But what Rosemary Morton goes through in this story, it's like, seems way deeper. And at some point in the essay, she actually refers to her situation as a case of gravitational anarchy.
Robert Krulwich
That's an interesting phrase.
Jad Abumrad
Phrase I kind of. I kind of like.
Robert Krulwich
Yeah. Well, does she get better?
Jad Abumrad
Yep.
It's impossible to say exactly when it all ended, but I think it was Frank who really sensed at first. It was after dinner one night in late August, and he suddenly smiled and remarked that I must be feeling much better. I asked him what he meant. You never look scared anymore, he said.
It's very mysterious. But her vertigo just went away. Poof.
Robert Krulwich
Without explanation for the coming and no explanation for the going.
Jad Abumrad
Some things just don't have explanations, Robert. But they have wonderful sound design, and that's Radiolab. No explanations. Pretty sounds.
Robert Krulwich
I'd buy a ticket to that, Mr. Jeekers. I'm crazy for sound design. Speaking of not knowing anything.
Jad Abumrad
Thanks to Burton Ruscha. Well, he's not alive anymore, but you can find his story essentially normal in the awesome book Medical Detectives, which was published in 1984 by Dutton. Our sincere thanks to actress Hope Davis and to Sarah Montague and Ellen Horn for directing Hope in the studio. And thanks to Tim Howard and Douglas Smith for the scoring help with that piece. And lastly, thanks to you for listening.
Hey, I'm Lemon and I'm from Richmond, Indiana, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Dylan Keith is our director, Director of Sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyan Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandbach, Anisa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Martin Middleton.
Liza Schoenfeld
Hi, my name is Tresa. I'm calling from Colchester in Essex, uk.
Jad Abumrad
Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is.
Liza Schoenfeld
Provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore.
Jad Abumrad
Foundation Science Sandbox, the Siemens Foundation Initiative.
Liza Schoenfeld
And the John Templeton Foundation.
Jad Abumrad
Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by.
Liza Schoenfeld
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Jad Abumrad
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Radiolab: Vertigogo – Episode Summary
Radiolab, hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser, delves into the intricate interplay between the human brain and our perceptions of reality. In the episode titled "Vertigogo," released on February 7, 2025, the show explores the phenomenon of vertigo through two compelling narratives—one personal and scientific, the other a literary exploration.
[01:01] The episode opens with Lulu introducing Liza Schoenfeld, a research technician at the Gladstone Institute at the University of California, San Francisco. As a budding neuroscientist, Liza is immersed in the study of the basal ganglia—a pivotal brain region responsible for controlling movement.
[02:15] Liza shares her early career aspirations, applying to prestigious graduate programs at institutions like the University of Washington and UC San Diego. Her passion for neuroscience is palpable as she discusses her work with optogenetics—a groundbreaking technology that allows precise control over neuronal activity using light.
[03:20] Through her research, Liza explains how scientists can manipulate the basal ganglia in mice, effectively "puppeteering" their movements with lasers. This innovative approach offers profound insights into motor control and neurological disorders.
[07:02] However, Liza's journey takes an unexpected turn when she experiences severe nausea from a common anti-nausea medication, Compazine. "[...] the drug had been doing to her pretty much what she'd been doing to those mice," Robert Krulwich remarks at [11:14]. This side effect induces acute dystonia—a condition causing involuntary muscle contractions—mirroring the very mechanisms she studies in her lab.
[10:21] Amid a pivotal graduate interview, Liza's uncontrollable facial and neck movements bewilder both her and the interviewers. "[...] I couldn't stop it. I look surprised at everything I'm saying," Liza recounts at [08:22]. Despite the chaos, she manages to navigate the interview, though the experience leaves her unanswered questions about her body's rebellion against her scientific understanding.
[12:14] Emergency intervention with Benadryl swiftly alleviates her symptoms, restoring control over her basal ganglia. Reflecting on her ordeal, Liza expresses profound empathy for her lab mice, now seeing them through the lens of personal vulnerability. "[...] I just really empathize with them," she states at [12:33].
Ultimately, Liza's perseverance pays off as she secures a place as a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, armed with firsthand experience of the delicate balance within the human brain.
Transitioning from personal experience to literary narrative, Radiolab presents an evocative essay by Burton Ruscha, brought to life by actress Hope Davis. [17:00] The story chronicles Rosemary Morton's harrowing battle with vertigo, a condition rooted in labyrinthitis—"[...] an inflammation of the inner ear," Jad Abumrad explains at [26:45].
[17:06] Rosemary's journey begins innocuously on a quiet evening, disrupted by unexplained tremors and movements that leave her questioning her reality. As these sensations intensify, they morph into vivid distortions of space and self, blurring the lines between perception and physicality.
[19:35] Over months, Rosemary experiences an escalating series of disorienting events: floors wobble, walls tilt, and her body feels amorphous, as if influenced by external gravitational forces. "[...] I was almost at the end of the passage when I felt the movement change," she narrates, capturing the terror and confusion that grip her daily existence.
[21:40] Despite consulting numerous specialists, Rosemary receives no definitive diagnosis—"Normal. Essentially normal," the doctors assure her at [21:40]. This dismissal only deepens her anxiety, leading to an existential crisis marked by an urgent obsession with life's fleeting moments and sensory experiences.
[27:08] The narrative crescendos as Rosemary confronts the cumulative impact of her condition, culminating in an inexplicable recovery. "She must be feeling much better," her husband observes at [28:13], signaling a mysterious end to her vertiginous ordeal without clear explanation.
Ruscha's essay, rich with psychological and physiological exploration, underscores the enigmatic nature of vertigo—both a medical condition and a profound personal experience.
Vertigogo masterfully intertwines scientific inquiry with human experience, revealing how deeply our brains influence our perception of the world. Through Liza Schoenfeld's scientific challenges and Rosemary Morton's literary voyage, Radiolab illuminates vertigo's multifaceted impact—both as a neurological condition and as a metaphor for internal disarray.
As Liza poignantly states, "[...] I'm still working with those mice. [...] I just really empathize with them," highlighting the delicate interplay between scientific exploration and personal empathy. Meanwhile, Rosemary's story serves as a haunting reminder of the brain's profound influence over reality, where "Some things just don't have explanations," reflecting the mysteries that continue to captivate and confound us.
Radiolab's innovative sound design and investigative storytelling invite listeners to ponder the intricate mechanisms of the brain, urging a deeper understanding of the invisible forces that shape our reality.
Notable Quotes:
Liza Schoenfeld [08:22]: "I couldn't stop it. I look surprised at everything I'm saying."
Robert Krulwich [11:14]: "The drug had been doing to her pretty much what she'd been doing to those mice."
Rosemary Morton [26:40]: "My trouble was a disturbance of the internal ear called labyrinthitis."
Rosemary Morton [27:44]: "It's impossible to say exactly when it all ended, but I think it was Frank who really sensed at first."
Radiolab continues to push the boundaries of storytelling and sound design, offering listeners an immersive exploration into the complexities of the human brain and beyond.