Where Am I?

Summary

Radiolab: "Where Am I?"

Date: May 5, 2006
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Featured Guests: Oliver Sacks, Robert Sapolsky, Antonio Damasio, VS Ramachandran, Ian Waterman, Jonathan Cole, Dan Fulghum, Jim Whinnery, Tim Sestak, among others

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode delves into the mysterious relationship between the brain and the body—how our brains construct, experience, and sometimes lose track of the sense of self. Through poignant interviews, thought experiments, dramatic reenactments, and scientific stories, Radiolab explores what happens when lines of communication between body and brain go awry, challenging the conventional sense of where "I" begin and end.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Brain-Body Conversation

Timestamps: 00:53–02:00

• The episode opens with hosts reflecting on how humans are always translating bodily information: the body supplies raw sensation, which the brain interprets into feelings and self-awareness.
• Oliver Sacks demonstrates rare-earth magnets that can orient to the Earth's magnetic field, sparking a conversation about augmenting or supplementing human senses—e.g., by "feeling" North in your thighs like migratory birds (02:02–03:14).

  “I am very bad at orienting myself in space.” —Oliver Sacks [02:00]

2. Emotional Perception: The Body Knows First

Timestamps: 04:13–10:34

• Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky explains how the body, through the amygdala, can register emotional reactions before the brain consciously processes events. (Ex: seeing a friend’s corpse; body reacts before mind comprehends) [06:08]
• William James' counterintuitive theory revisited: feelings are perceptions of bodily changes, not just mental processes.

  “Your body knows it before you consciously know it.” —Sapolsky [06:50]

• Damasio’s research: People with paralysis or lacking bodily sensation report blunted emotional experience (09:31–10:12).

3. Real-Life Example: The Domestic Argument

Timestamps: 11:14–14:29

• A humorous/insightful fight between Robert Krulwich and his wife Tamar Lewin illustrates how emotional systems in the body (heart rate, stomach clenching) persist even after a conflict is "resolved" intellectually (12:16).
• Notable gender difference: Women’s physiological arousal from arguments generally takes longer to dissipate, sometimes keeping old resentments alive.

  “Sometimes the body actually tricks the brain.” —Sapolsky (paraphrased by hosts) [13:23]

4. Phantom Limbs: Ownership Beyond the Body

Timestamps: 16:47–26:31

• Soldiers in the Civil War reported feeling pain, sensation, or movement in amputated limbs ("phantom limbs"). William James and Dr. Silas Mitchell both investigated these experiences.
• Dr. VS Ramachandran describes the case of a patient with a painful paralyzed phantom limb. Ramachandran invents the "mirror box" technique—using mirrors to "trick" the brain back into imagining/controlling the missing limb, sometimes relieving pain or even "erasing" the limb entirely (21:42–24:29).

  “My God, doctor, you’re not going to believe this. The movements have all come back... all these movements in my fingers, in my elbow, in my wrist from 11 years ago come flooding into my mind.” —VS Ramachandran, quoting patient [23:07] “This is the first example in the history of medicine of a successful amputation of a phantom limb.” —VS Ramachandran [25:03]

5. Proprioception: Losing and Rebuilding the Sense of Self

Timestamps: 29:00–43:07

• Oliver Sacks describes "proprioception," the body’s internal sense of position, and poses the hypothetical horror of losing it (30:03–31:29).
• Ian Waterman’s story: After a mysterious illness, Waterman lost all proprioceptive feedback and some touch, becoming one of only six known cases. Unlike most, he painstakingly relearned to move—by visually tracking his body and consciously controlling each muscle, gesture, and movement (32:57–37:37).

  “From the neck down, I had no control over my limbs.” —Ian Waterman [34:56] “Every day, every move that Ian makes, he has to consciously direct. It’s as though Ian were two people. A puppeteer and a puppet. His mind is directing and his body is obeying. And the strings of Ian’s puppet, interestingly, are his eyes.” —Krulwich [37:21] “If I look away from my hand, I lose all connection with it.” —Ian Waterman [37:52]

• Waterman’s attention lapse (distracted by a pretty girl!) almost makes him fall—illustrating the perpetual focus required for his daily functioning (39:55–41:12).

6. Body Schema and Out-of-Body Experiences in Pilots

Timestamps: 44:24–57:58

• Neuropsychologist Paul Broks introduces "body schema": the brain’s internal map of where the body is in space, a subconscious model sometimes tricked or disrupted.
• Dan Fulghum, a pilot, describes a terrifying "out of body" sensation while flying, as if watching himself pilot the plane from above after a hard maneuver (45:56–46:42).

  “I was watching myself not knowing it was me. What’s going on here? I’m just gonna watch this for a little while.” —Dan Fulghum [46:08]

• FAA scientist Jim Whinnery uses a centrifuge to study blackout and dissociation in pilots exposed to high G-forces. Volunteers (like Tim Sestak) describe loss of vision, delusional "dreamlets," and even out-of-body or near-death-like experiences as the brain loses contact with the body due to blood loss (49:01–56:45).

  “I actually had no idea who I was, where I was, or what I was doing. I hear this beeping, there’s this white light beeping...” —Tim Sestak [51:23]

• Even scientists experience these phenomena, reinforcing how the brain constructs reality (and self) from intermittent, sometimes missing, bodily feedback.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Your body knows it before you consciously know it." —Robert Sapolsky [06:50]
• “If you took away the body, there’d be nothing left to feel.” —William James paraphrased [08:23]
• “From the neck down, I had no control over my limbs.” —Ian Waterman [34:56]
• “Every move that Ian makes, he has to consciously direct. It’s as though Ian were two people. A puppeteer and a puppet.” —Robert Krulwich [37:21]
• “I was watching myself not knowing it was me.” —Dan Fulghum [46:08]
• “I actually had no idea who I was, where I was, or what I was doing.” —Tim Sestak (on G-force blackout) [51:23]
• “This is the first example in the history of medicine of a successful amputation of a phantom limb.” —VS Ramachandran [25:03]

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Important Segments: Timestamps Quick Reference

• Proprioception & Oliver Sacks: 00:53–03:50
• Sapolsky on Emotion & William James: 04:13–10:34
• Fighting with Your Body & Partner: 11:14–14:29
• Phantom Limbs & Ramachandran: 16:47–26:31
• Ian Waterman’s Story: 29:00–43:07
• Pilots, Blackouts & Out of Body: 44:24–57:58

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Episode Tone & Language

The episode fluidly blends scientific rigour with empathy, curiosity, and playful banter. Personal stories, scientific interviews, and re-enactments are mixed with gentle humor and awe. The language is accessible but never dumbed down; hosts and guests bring passion and, at times, real vulnerability to these questions about our selves.

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Summary Takeaways

“Where Am I?” explores the often-illusory line between body and mind, showing how our sense of confidence in knowing “where we are” depends on a continuous, complex conversation between nerve signals, perception, and conscious thought. We are a mix of sensation and interpretation, and that dialogue—at times, fragile—shapes who we are in each moment.

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Further Information

• For more stories and references, visit radiolab.org
• Notable books referenced: "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness" by VS Ramachandran, "Pride and a Daily Marathon" by Jonathan Cole

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Contributors

Thanks to all guests, scientists, and steadfastly experimental producers for sharing these profound, sometimes surreal journeys between body, brain, and self.

Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

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[Robert Krulwich]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[VS Ramachandran]

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[Jad Abumrad]

3. Selection varies by location while supplies last. See Lowes.com for more details. You're listening to radio lab from new york public radio.

[Jim Winery]

Public radio, wnyc.

[Jad Abumrad]

Testing, testing. This is Radiolab. I'm Chad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And since this hour we'll be talking about brains and bodies and how they communicate. We thought we'd begin the program with a guy that we go to quite often. He knows about this sort of thing. Oliver Sacks.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oliver is a neurologist, very famous author. He took us to his study to show us something that just fascinates him. I've become fascinated. Incidentally, I hope you have to be.

[Ian Waterman]

Careful with your watch or your computers.

[Jad Abumrad]

He showed us a silver ball.

[Robert Krulwich]

I should just describe here. I am looking at a silver ball about the size of a small, small ping pong ball.

[Jad Abumrad]

Which he handed to you, right?

[Robert Krulwich]

Would you care to lift up that little steel ball?

[Jad Abumrad]

And as soon as he did.

[Robert Krulwich]

I am. I am trying.

[Jad Abumrad]

The ball went flying through the air, taking your hand with it, smack into the nearest bit of metal in the vicinity, which was a plate a little to your left, very fast.

[Robert Krulwich]

And it hurts. Wow. Now, be careful, okay? Don't put it too near your watch. And also you have to put it down very gently. Otherwise it may fly with great violence onto this nickel sled. What is that? Why are we talking about it?

[Ian Waterman]

Okay, well, this is a little rare.

[Robert Krulwich]

Earth metal magnet of great strength. These magnets orient themselves almost violently to the earth's magnetic field. If you have a couple of these things, say, in your pockets, and you go for a walk, as you turn a corner, you will feel them reorient themselves in your pockets like little animals. So your pockets would tell you whether you were going north, south, east or west. Your pockets, or wherever you have the rare earth magnets and how. You're a very weird man. How would you propose to use this? In what situation that you have imagined. Would it be a happy advantage? Well, I myself am always getting lost. I have no sense of direction. I would function better if I said to you, oliver, downtown to meet me. You would know because of the Pressure on your thighs from these little balls that you were carrying on whether you were going downtown or not downtown. And I may need things like this. I am very bad at orienting myself in space.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's trying to do what the birds do, right? Because birds have magnets in their brains or something like magnets, which lets them fly south.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. So they know where they fly when they're migrating. He's trying to start a conversation like a bird, but in this case, he's chosen his thighs. He wants his thighs to talk to his brain. I've often wondered, as an aside.

[Jad Abumrad]

The.

[Robert Krulwich]

Extent to which one could develop a new sense.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's what this hour of Radiolab is about.

[Robert Krulwich]

Human beings, not just Oliver, all kinds of folks who are attempting to add senses and mostly to subtract senses.

[Jad Abumrad]

We'll have stories about both adding and losing senses, and more generally, a look at how brains and bodies communicate. Often fail to communicate because, believe it or not, it's not an easy relationship between your brain and your body. There's a lot of confusion, deception even. That's what new research shows. And we'll get into all of that.

[Robert Krulwich]

So let's get into it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Alright?

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

Ready? Yeah. Where first?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, let's begin with a neurologist.

[Jim Winery]

Let's see. My cell phone is ringing, so let me pause until it stops.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's Robert Sapolsky. He's a professor of biology at Stanford.

[Jim Winery]

I've never figured out how to do voice messaging or whatever. No, me neither has done in this century.

[Robert Krulwich]

Prisoners of our machines.

[Jim Winery]

Oh, okay. We're in business here.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay. So to begin. Now, I said to Robert Sapolsky, just to get my head around this, let's imagine that I decide to visit my best friend in the world. Tommy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Tommy.

[Robert Krulwich]

I walk over to his house. I have a key, so I open the front door. Tommy. I walk into his apartment. Tommy. And then I see him sprawled on the floor, dead. And in a horrible, tragic instant like that, I wondered what would be going on in my brain. And I asked this because his answer, Sapolsky's answer, was so weird. According to Sapolsky, what happens happens in the following order. First light bounces off Tommy's corpse and enters my eye.

[Jim Winery]

Okay? It goes up some nerve from your eyes and into one part of the brain, which turfs it on to the next part.

[Robert Krulwich]

And then the information keeps moving.

[Jim Winery]

A couple of steps down, it gets into what's called your visual cortex, which turns the dots into lines and lines into shapes. And that's just like a local train you're taking.

[Robert Krulwich]

Eventually, that local train carrying the image of Tommy will chug and chug deeper into my brain, to my cortex. And after a few more stops, I will finally know. I will consciously know that Tommy is dead.

[Jad Abumrad]

Tommy.

[Robert Krulwich]

But now, here's the surprise. Information can move through the brain in different ways at the same time. And there is a second route.

[Jim Winery]

It turns out there's a second pathway.

[Robert Krulwich]

Into my body, into my nervous system.

[Jim Winery]

Which bypasses all of that visual cortex stuff like a bullet train, and goes straight to this area called the amygdala. And what the amygdala does is instantly.

[Robert Krulwich]

It tells the heart to pound.

[Jim Winery]

Your heart speeds up, the stomach to clench, stomach muscles clench, tears to flinch. And you're still a couple of seconds away from, like, even consciously making sense of what you're seeing. And by then, already your stomach is heading towards your throat or your throat's in your mouth or whatever the cliche is.

[Robert Krulwich]

So as I'm standing there in Tommy's apartment, looking at this figure on the ground, before I even know what I'm looking at, before I am consciously aware that Tommy is dead, my body already knows.

[Jim Winery]

That's exactly the punchline. Your body knows it before you consciously know it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Which is an astonishing idea. It is astonishing, but it's not a new idea.

[Jim Winery]

Yeah. This goes back to what was originally viewed as this totally asinine theory in psychology back around 1900. One of the, you know, grand old poobahs of psychology, William James. William James.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he's trying to answer the question.

[Robert Krulwich]

Where feelings came from.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Joan o', Leara, a science writer. He really likes William James. He's written a lot about him. And he says, a hundred years ago, William James poses a thought experiment. He gives the example of a bear. He says, imagine you're walking through the woods. All of a sudden, from behind a tree, a bear attacks. And he wondered. William James did, okay, so the bear attacks. You're gonna feel scared. But what exactly is that feeling of fear made of? Which seems like a strange question to ask.

[Jim Winery]

Yeah, but.

[Jad Abumrad]

But he was trying to be empirical about it. He was trying to be a good psychologist. And his answer was that the feeling is the perception of your body. Meaning, step one, you see the bear. You see a bear with his teeth in his claws. Step two, your body responds. The fast heartbeat, the adrenaline cursing in your bloodstream. It's only in step three, when the brain sees the body respond, does it then trigger the. The feeling of fear. The feeling of fear comes from the perception of those changes in your body.

[Robert Krulwich]

If you took away the heartbeat, if.

[Jad Abumrad]

You took away the body, there'd be.

[Robert Krulwich]

Nothing left to feel.

[Jad Abumrad]

Needless to say, when William James proposed this idea, people thought he was nuts. Completely nuts. They said, you know, if you're right, then someone who's paralyzed from the neck down and who doesn't get signals from their body, well, that person would see the bear in the woods and they wouldn't get scared.

[Robert Krulwich]

Which is ridiculous, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

Completely ridiculous. So the critics said, William James is wrong, dead wrong. And that's the end of it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, not quite the end of it.

[Jim Winery]

Hello.

[Ian Waterman]

Come this way.

[Jim Winery]

Hello.

[Robert Krulwich]

We happen to bump into a neurologist.

[Ian Waterman]

Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow, what a nice place.

[Robert Krulwich]

So we're sitting here with DiMaggio and we happen to be talking about William James and his critics, as we always do. Always do. We don't go into a luncheonette for lunch before we order a tuna fish sandwich. We always mention William James and his critics. This is something we do. So I said to DiMasio, you know, the critics call James wrong because he said people who were paralyzed couldn't feel anything. And he says, you know, it's funny you should mention this because there's been a series of studies thinking about James one more time.

[Ian Waterman]

And it's very interesting because the first study that was made in this area was made by a paraplegic psychologist who thought that he felt less emotional than he was before. And he talked to others and others reported the same.

[Robert Krulwich]

The studies reported that people who had once been able bodied and then became paralyzed felt less. Less happy than able bodied people, less sad than able bodied people, just less.

[Ian Waterman]

Our being is rooted in a body state. If I would be able to remove from your brain the representation of your.

[Robert Krulwich]

Body, you would not know that you were you. And would I not be sorry at my friend's death?

[Ian Waterman]

You definitely would not be sorry at anything. What is in fact the essence of being joyful or sad if you don't hook those notions on a church changed body.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's right, you know, I mean, if you think about the last time you were sad, like really sad, how would you describe that feeling to yourself?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, in fairness, I guess I would. I would say I felt dragged out and heavy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, that feeling is completely rooted in your flesh. Well, the brain has nothing to do with it.

[Robert Krulwich]

The thought made me sad and then my body felt.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh crap, I forgot to turn the ring off. Hold on. Hello? Oh, hi. Yeah, hold on one second. It's your wife here.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hello?

[Jim Winery]

Robert?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jim Winery]

I can't believe you're still there. What are you doing there?

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you mean, what am I doing here?

[Jim Winery]

You were supposed to be home an hour ago.

[Robert Krulwich]

Tamar. Tamar, you've called me in the studio. We're on the air.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't care.

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you mean you don't care?

[Jim Winery]

You were supposed to be home an hour ago. I reminded you this morning. I reminded you last night. It's just not important to you.

[Robert Krulwich]

There's not such a big deal. I'll be back in.

[Jad Abumrad]

Actually, this is a perfect example of what we've been talking about.

[Robert Krulwich]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Robert's having a fight with his wife, Tamar. And while he's fighting, inside his body, his stomach is clenching. His heart is palpitating, hers is doing the same. Their brains are picking up these signals and thinking, anger. Feel angry.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm working with other people here.

[Jim Winery]

There are other people who are just as important as your work, and you've now screwed it up.

[Robert Krulwich]

How did I screw it up? How did I screw up your work?

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, at a certain point, Robert will probably realize he has screwed up and.

[Jim Winery]

You just get home, he'll apologize.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, if I get home in 20 minutes, I'm really sorry. I know this is horrible.

[Jad Abumrad]

Robert, Is everything okay?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's Just a second. I'm really sorry. Okay, maybe like now.

[Jad Abumrad]

When it comes to brains and bodies, in men and women, the interesting thing is that when a man and woman fight these systems in their body, the heart palpitating, the stomach clenching, while these systems do turn on at the same.

[Jim Winery]

Speed, and it takes like two seconds.

[Jad Abumrad]

According to Robert Spolsky, where there's an.

[Jim Winery]

Interesting gender difference, is how long it takes to turn off the system.

[Jad Abumrad]

And ladies, sorry in advance.

[Jim Winery]

And in general, it turns off more slowly in women than in men, which.

[Jad Abumrad]

May explain something that happens to couples all the time.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, I'm really sorry.

[Jim Winery]

This just isn't right.

[Robert Krulwich]

I know. Oh, I'm really sorry.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like, here we are.

[Robert Krulwich]

Maybe, like, maybe later we'll go do something or. I'm really sorry.

[Jad Abumrad]

Robert's stomach is relaxing.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is really stupid. I know.

[Jad Abumrad]

His heart is slowing.

[Robert Krulwich]

Very stupid.

[Jad Abumrad]

He thinks the fight might be over.

[Jim Winery]

Okay, but, you know, this is something you do all the time. Remember when we were having a dinner right after we got engaged and we went to the restaurant and I was waiting for you, and I made the reservation and you.

[Robert Krulwich]

That was in the Carter administration. I was here for, like 45 minutes.

[Jim Winery]

You didn't even call.

[Robert Krulwich]

I just apologized.

[Jad Abumrad]

Did you hear what just happened there?

[Jim Winery]

It's this William James stuff coming back to haunt us a century later.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sapolsky says sometimes the body actually tricks the brain. Tamar knows the fight is over mentally, but her body is still tense, her heart is still racing, and her brain thinks, wait.

[Jim Winery]

If my heart is still racing and I consciously know that this issue has been resolved, it must be because I'm still pissed off about that thing that happened in the Carter administration.

[Jad Abumrad]

You minimize everything everybody does for you.

[Jim Winery]

The brain fills a vacuum.

[Robert Krulwich]

You have a list there or something? I do. I have a long list.

[Jim Winery]

Do you know how often you do this sort of thing?

[Robert Krulwich]

I do it like one stool.

[Jim Winery]

No, I can count on this. Do you know the babysitter calls if I'm going to be out of town and says, should I make dinner for Robert? Because, of course you can't make dinner for yourself and the kids.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, I do make dinner.

[Jim Winery]

I have made much of anything.

[Robert Krulwich]

Baked potatoes. Last week, Wednesday, I made the baked potatoes.

[Jim Winery]

That's just applying heat.

[Ian Waterman]

Just apply.

[Robert Krulwich]

I want to thank my wife, Tamar Lewin, for what I think was a pretty startlingly realist. I mean, a performance which I don't know how she did that because it's so unlike the rest of our marriage, you know. The story, by the way, came from Robert Sapolsky, and he tells it about his wife, too. But they're not reporters, they're scientists, so they do it differently.

[Jim Winery]

My wife's in the same business as me, so the very words we will say to each other is, honey, don't forget what the half life is on the autonomic nervous system. Then suddenly it's all over with.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's such a rare exchange between two.

[Jim Winery]

People, you know, I know we're just sentimentalists.

[Jad Abumrad]

By the way, Robert Spolsky's latest book is called Monkey Love, which is where that wife anecdote came from. And speaking of brains and bodies, let's put the science on pause for a moment and take a brief detour. Because often what gets you into these ideas, like take this kid, for example.

[Jim Winery]

I'm Christopher Seale, go to Blake High School.

[Jad Abumrad]

Isn't the science. It's more basic than that. It's seeing something disgusting and not being able to look away.

[Jim Winery]

You really just can't believe that if something feels like this, it actually came out of a real person. You just don't get the feeling.

[Jad Abumrad]

When we bumped into Christopher, he was gingerly holding a pair of human lungs.

[Jim Winery]

But it is a real person. But you just don't really associate with a real person because it's there in front of you and it doesn't look like a real person.

[Jad Abumrad]

In any case, that sense of whoa. That's why we originally went to the Walter Reed Army Medical center in Washington, D.C. but here's what happened. Our tour guide, okay, Stephen S T.

[Jim Winery]

E V E N Solomon S O.

[Jad Abumrad]

L O M O N. He showed us a particular photo that got us thinking.

[Jim Winery]

This is a famous photo in our archives. It's called Field Day.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a Civil War photo hanging in a side gallery. It's a picture of legs, pile of amputated legs, a huge heap of severed.

[Jim Winery]

Legs, some feet thrown sort of haphazardly into a pile.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wow.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's oddly beautiful, in a way. Gruesome. But the next thought immediately after was what was happening at that moment. Right to one side of the picture frame must have been an operating table, and on the table, a soldier inhaling chloroform. And at the foot of the table must have been a doctor sawing away.

[Jim Winery]

A circular amputation involved cutting straight through the skin to the bone, a flap amputation required the tissue to be cut, leaving two flaps of skin that were used to create a stump. And in fact, your typical army surgeon was basically graded on how quickly they could do an amputation.

[Robert Krulwich]

It was one of the first wars.

[Jad Abumrad]

Where you really had doctors being aggressive in terms of taking off limbs. Like I said, that photo got us thinking. So we went back to Joan o', Lear, who has written about a very ghostly side effect that pops up during the Civil War as a direct result of all of that taking off of limbs. This one astonishing syndrome that these men who have had their limbs taken off, they describe very, very often this is a very common thing, that they still feel their phantom limbs. They say, I feel it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

They say, doctor, I still feel it move.

[Robert Krulwich]

They can feel it hurt, can feel.

[Jad Abumrad]

It sometimes get hot, sometimes very cold. Imagine you're a Civil War doctor and you hear this. You don't even know what germs are yet. But one guy, Dr. Silas War Mitchell, decides he's gonna get to the bottom of it.

[Robert Krulwich]

The first thing he did was he.

[Jim Winery]

Wrote some clinical reports.

[Robert Krulwich]

Only about 5% of the men who have suffered amputation never have any feeling.

[Jim Winery]

Of the part as being still present.

[Jad Abumrad]

And circulated them around the hospitals, while.

[Robert Krulwich]

The remainder seem to retain a sense of its existence, so vivid as to be more definite and intrusive than it is of the truly living Fellow member, the stump is liable to the most horrible neuralgias and to a certain curious spasmodic paralysis.

[Jad Abumrad]

No one could make sense of this, even our guy, William James. Even he looks into it.

[Robert Krulwich]

He did a very authoritative study where.

[Jad Abumrad]

He sent out questionnaires to all these amputee victims and wanted to know about their lost limbs. He asked all of these Civil War amputees all these questions. Does your phantom limb hurt? Can you move it? If you really concentrate. And what he found was that there were no patterns, no stereotypical lost limb. Every experience was different. In other words, phantom limbs are like real limbs. They're yours.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, on this topic of phantom limbs, there is a guy who has figured at least something out about this phenomenon. Dr. VS Ramachandran.

[VS Ramachandran]

I am VS Ramachandran.

[Robert Krulwich]

Remember him?

[Jad Abumrad]

I remember him.

[Robert Krulwich]

He's a well known neurologist. He works in California at the University.

[VS Ramachandran]

Of California, San Diego.

[Robert Krulwich]

And one day he says a patient showed up in his office and it seems that the guy had had his arm amputated. It was his left arm. And then ever since, this man had an uncanny feeling that he still had an arm where his real arm used to be.

[VS Ramachandran]

Yes. Now it's important to emphasize this is not a delusion. He doesn't think he has an arm. He knows he doesn't. He's not crazy. But he vividly feels its presence.

[Robert Krulwich]

And the rough part was that this arm, it hurt. This sometimes happens to people with phantom limbs. He would have days where his phantom arm would seize up in pain.

[VS Ramachandran]

Doctor, it hurts really badly. It goes into this painful clenching spasm. The nails dig into my palm.

[Robert Krulwich]

So he has a phantom limb hand at the end of his phantom limb.

[VS Ramachandran]

Yes. And he'll say things like, it's going into a cramp with the nails digging into the phantom palm and it's excruciatingly painful.

[Robert Krulwich]

But there are no nails. There is no palm.

[VS Ramachandran]

There is no palm.

[Robert Krulwich]

And weirdest of all, the patient couldn't do anything about it. He'd try to unclench his phantom nails from his phantom palm to make the pain stop. But he couldn't.

[VS Ramachandran]

He said, I cannot move the phantom.

[Robert Krulwich]

The phantom arm wouldn't obey.

[VS Ramachandran]

I cannot volitionally move it. And I started thinking to myself, what does he mean when he says he cannot move his phantom limb? It's like an oxymoron. There is no arm there.

[Robert Krulwich]

Dr. Ramachandran was confused. What's going on? He checked with the patient and discovered that 11 years earlier, before the amputation, he'd had an Injury to his spine. And after that, his real left arm was paralyzed. He could not move it. He tried. His brain would issue the commands.

[VS Ramachandran]

His brain was saying, move the arm. But he was getting visual feedback and indeed feedback from his muscles saying, nope, move the arm. No.

[Robert Krulwich]

Move.

[VS Ramachandran]

No.

[Robert Krulwich]

And this went on for months. Move.

[VS Ramachandran]

No.

[Robert Krulwich]

So maybe, thought Dr. Ramachandran, maybe this patient got so frustrated trying to move his real arm that at some point.

[VS Ramachandran]

After a few months or a year, the paralysis got learnt by the brain, stamped into the circuitry of the brain, and I call it learned.

[Robert Krulwich]

Learned paralysis. Even when they cut the patient's arm off a year after the accident, he still didn't get any relief because the problem wasn't in his arm. It was learned paralysis. It was in his head now. And that is when Ramachandran thought, well, maybe the solution here is to trick this man's brain to unparalyze, to get his cells to think, well, actually, we can move an arm, but how do you trick a brain? How would you do that? How would you do that?

[Jad Abumrad]

How would you do that?

[VS Ramachandran]

How would you do that? Indeed, he thought for a bit. Then I hit on this way of using a mirror propped inside a cardboard box.

[Ian Waterman]

A what?

[VS Ramachandran]

A mirror. Mirror propped inside a cardboard box.

[Robert Krulwich]

A mirror parked inside a car. I mean, like a box propped up. Oh. It was kind of a Home Depot solution, really. Ramachandran took a long and skinny mirror, the kind you'd hang on a closet door, right? And he propped it up using a cardboard box and then turned it sideways, placed the side right in front of the patient, like right on his nose.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he couldn't see himself?

[Robert Krulwich]

No, couldn't see anything in the mirror yet. Unless he hooked his neck around, took a peek. Otherwise he's just looking at the side. Ramachandran says, I want you to imagine this with me, Jed. He says, I want you to take your good arm, your real arm, okay? And stick it out in front of the mirror. So do that. Okay, now make it do what the phantom arm does. Take your good arm, make it stiff. Curl your hand into a fist. Dig your fingernails into your palm deeply. Make it hurt. You doing that?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, it's kinda hurting.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, now, when I tell you, crook your head so you can look into the mirror. And on your left, just where the phantom ought to be. Let's pretend that that's your phantom arm. It's cramped, it's curled exactly as you'd imagine it. So now look in the mirror, okay? And there's your arm. You see it there in the mirror. Your phantom arm.

[Jad Abumrad]

Got it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, very slowly, keeping your eye on the mirror. Now I want you to uncurl your hand.

[VS Ramachandran]

Patient says, okay. He opens his real hand. My God. And of course, it looks like his phantom is opening. That's not surprising. He's got the mirror there. But he says, my God, Doctor, you're not going to believe this. The movements have all come back. All these movements in my fingers, in my elbow, in my wrist from 11 years ago come flooding into my mind.

[Robert Krulwich]

So his pretend nails are now ungripping from his pretend palm, and the whole problem of the pretend pain goes away.

[VS Ramachandran]

Goes away. That's what he said.

[Robert Krulwich]

For how long, by the way?

[VS Ramachandran]

Till the mirror was in place.

[Robert Krulwich]

But when Dr. Ramachandran took away the mirrors, the pain came back.

[VS Ramachandran]

I said, fine. C' est la vie, you know? And then I said, look, why don't you practice with the mirror for a few weeks, every day for an hour. Then maybe if you do it repeatedly, you can unlearn the learned pain.

[Robert Krulwich]

So the guy goes home, you give him a mirror to take home.

[VS Ramachandran]

Correct.

[Robert Krulwich]

And he does this.

[VS Ramachandran]

$2. Take it with you. So he takes it with him. He's delighted. And then after about another week, he phones me and he sounds all agitated on the phone, and I said, what's going on? I said, doctor, you're not going to believe this. It's gone. I said, what's gone? I thought maybe the mirror was gone. He said, no, no, not the mirror. The phantom is gone.

[Robert Krulwich]

Gone, gone.

[VS Ramachandran]

That's what I said.

[Jim Winery]

Gone.

[VS Ramachandran]

Gone. What do you mean phantom is gone? He said, well, this phantom arm I've been having for the last 11 years has disappeared. My initial reaction was alarm. I said, my God, does this bother you, Derek? He said, no, this happened three days ago. And in the last three days, you remember the excruciating elbow pain and wrist pain I got several times a day, but I don't have them anymore because I don't have an arm. But my fingers, they have not disappeared. And they're still up here dangling near my shoulder, and they're still painful.

[Robert Krulwich]

You mean just disconnected, disembodied fingerlets?

[VS Ramachandran]

Yeah, fingerlets dangling from the shoulder.

[Jad Abumrad]

What. What does that mean?

[Robert Krulwich]

This guy's saying that he seems to have fingertips hanging on his shoulder.

[VS Ramachandran]

He said, your mirror doesn't work anymore, so can you redesign it and push it, prop it near my nose so I can look at the reflection and maybe get. Get rid of the fingers?

[Robert Krulwich]

So he now wants to get Dr. Ramachandran to prop up the mirror, point them at these phantom fingertips, and have the mirror erase the fingertips.

[VS Ramachandran]

He thought I was a magician and I could, you know, eliminate his finger. Different body parts in sequence.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is amputation by mirror.

[VS Ramachandran]

Yeah. As I tell my medical colleagues jokingly, I say, this is the first example in the history of medicine of a successful amputation of a phantom limb.

[Robert Krulwich]

So don't leave me hanging here. Did the phantom fingers eventually dissolve?

[VS Ramachandran]

No, we still haven't been able to devise a technique to get them. And it turns out that the pain there subsided a bit, so he's not that worried about us getting rid of them.

[Robert Krulwich]

So somewhere in California, there's still a guy walking around with a sense with.

[Jad Abumrad]

Fingers on his shoulder.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, still dangling out of his shoulder. Which is not only weird, it suggests that there's an awful lot to know about how brains and bodies interact. Many things to learn. But for a workaday doc who has to deal with whatever comes through the door, Dr. Ramachandran had what I would call a pretty good day at the office.

[VS Ramachandran]

Yeah, exactly.

[Robert Krulwich]

V S Ramachandran is a neuroscientist at the University of California in San Diego, author of many books, including A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, which is where you can find out all about the mirror experiment.

[Jad Abumrad]

Next up, let's scale it up a bit. We're gonna go from lost limbs to a guy who's lost everything, his entire sense of his body. Amjad Abumrad, Robert Crowitz and I will continue in a moment. You are listening to Radiolab from New.

[Robert Krulwich]

York Public Radio, WNYC and npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello, this is Estefania Elorriaga, originally from Caracas, Venezuela and currently living in in Corvallis, Oregon. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of.

[Robert Krulwich]

Science and technology in the modern world.

[Jim Winery]

More information about [e-mail].

[Jad Abumrad]

Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the.

[Robert Krulwich]

Podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Stay tuned for a trailer and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jim Winery]

I'm Alex Honl, professional rock climber and founder of the Honl Foundation.

[Robert Krulwich]

I wanted to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet.

[Jim Winery]

Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas.

[Robert Krulwich]

And big solutions from the people leading.

[Jim Winery]

The way in conservation. Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservations of our time, Chris Tompkins, join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Krulwich]

How does the brain process memories?

[Jim Winery]

Why is AI a solution and a.

[Jad Abumrad]

Problem for our climate?

[Robert Krulwich]

What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest.

[Jad Abumrad]

Questions and the most complicated ideas of.

[Robert Krulwich]

Our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And in this hour on Radiolab, we're talking about the relationship, sometimes the uneasy relationship between the brain and the body.

[Robert Krulwich]

I think most people who have brains, and that would include, I think most of the listeners here, think the relationship between brain and body is more like the relationship of a commander to a commandee.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right?

[Robert Krulwich]

The brain makes the orders and the body responds. But I think the more accurate way is to think of this as a conversation between the brain and the body.

[Jad Abumrad]

How do you mean?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, because any movement, even a very basic one, let's just say wagging my tongue, okay? Very simple, really, but it still involves three steps. First, the brain has to issue the command, Tongue station.

[Jim Winery]

Tongue station, this is Mission Control. Commence wagging.

[Robert Krulwich]

Second, the command must be executed. And third. Now, this is the crucial step. The tongue, in this case, reports back to the brain.

[Jim Winery]

Mission Control, we have wagging.

[Robert Krulwich]

I repeat, we have wagging, thereby completing the loop.

[Jim Winery]

Mission Control, the foot. Come in, Foot. Mission Control, this is Foot. Give me your coordinates. Over. Roger that, Mission Control.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, this happens, this conversation you're hearing right now, it happens constantly, all over your body. Your brain is issuing commands.

[Jim Winery]

Left knee, come in. Left.

[Robert Krulwich]

Parts of your body are receiving the command and reporting back.

[Jim Winery]

Right leg standing by.

[Robert Krulwich]

And this conversation adds up to something really quite important. It adds up to a sense of yourself. It's an unconscious sense which really allows you to move normally. That's Oliver Sacks again, the neurologist we talked to at the start of the program. You have, of course, a sense of smell and of touch and of taste. He says this sixth sense also has a name. It's sometimes called proprioception. Proprioception. Proprioception is the unconscious sense by which the position of one's limbs, the posture of one's body, is automatically monitored. Now imagine, he says, what would happen if all of a sudden, this sixth sense, this conversation that you were always having with your body, suppose it went away. We all have this in a slight way. For example, if you go to the dentist and sometimes half of your mouth or your tongue is numbed, the tongue may Feel very large. You may grab the dental mirror to reassure yourself that all is okay. And this does and doesn't reassure you. But you can still wag your tongue. Your brain is still sending messages to the tongue.

[Jim Winery]

Tongue station, Tongue station, this is mission control.

[Robert Krulwich]

But the tongue isn't sending messages back anymore, So you can't feel anything. You know that feeling?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, of course.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, could you imagine that instead of just losing your tongue, your tongue not responding, Suppose your whole body doesn't respond, what would that be like? I mean, we have words like deaf or blind. We don't have a word for being, in effect, deaf and blind to one's own body.

[Jad Abumrad]

There you go.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's probably bigger.

[Ian Waterman]

Has it?

[Robert Krulwich]

And yet there are people who have a condition that rare and that horrible. No proprioception. We talked to such a person, Ian Waterman, and convinced him and his doctor and very good friend Jonathan Cole to crowd themselves into a very little recording studio the BBC lent us in Southampton in England. Hello, America. And we ask them to talk to us.

[Ian Waterman]

Hello.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, you've got a sexy voice.

[Ian Waterman]

Scary.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ah. Can you hear us? Can you hear me? Rather.

[Jim Winery]

Hi.

[Ian Waterman]

I can. Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thank you guys for coming and doing this with us.

[Ian Waterman]

Okay, yeah. Will you just ask us some questions and we'll answer them as best we can? Fire away.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right, well, let me just start it then. Now, can you remember? I'm sure you can. What happened that led to this total change in your life?

[Ian Waterman]

Yes, it began with what I thought was a bout of the flu or a very heavy, heady cold. And I was at the shop where I worked and felt tired and lethargic. The guy that owned the shop said, look, you know, you look unwell. Go home, take it easy. I took the day off, went home, and I've always been pretty energetic, and I hate being stuck indoors and what have you. And I thought, well, the fresh air will do me some. Some good. Got to the shed and pulled the. The motor mower out.

[Robert Krulwich]

Pulled the what out? What.

[Jad Abumrad]

What's that?

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you call it?

[Ian Waterman]

The mower. The. The lawn mower out of the shed.

[Robert Krulwich]

I thought it's going to be one of those cultural moments where you guys call it something else.

[Ian Waterman]

No, not quite. Pulled the lawnmower out of the shed and primed it up and started it, and it started chugging away. And as I engaged the gear, off it went. And I couldn't keep up with was a fairly slowly and ponderous sort of lawnmower. And I just stood there bemused, thinking how come I Just can't keep up with the moment and didn't really attend to much more than, you know, I'm just tired and sluggish and lethargic and went back to my bedroom and laid down and did some serious sleeping. And the following morning I went to get up and out of bed and collapsed against a radiator. I fell, slid, fell, tumbled out of the bed and fell against the radiator. It's very difficult to describe. As I lay there and I was laying flat, I had a rippling sensation in my tummy around the ankles. A tingling sensation, for want of a better term. I felt disembodied. I remember waking up with a hand on my face and not realizing that it was mine. Simple movement.

[Robert Krulwich]

Simple movement's the simplest of movements.

[Ian Waterman]

To pick up a cup, to eat a biscuit.

[Robert Krulwich]

Those things were suddenly very hard.

[Ian Waterman]

I couldn't control anything totally. I mean, from the neck down, I had no control over my limbs.

[Robert Krulwich]

And for the next 12 years, he went from hospital to hospital. Doctors couldn't help him because they'd never seen anything quite this drastic. Until he finally did meet a doctor, Jonathan Cole, who began to help him figure out what might be going on. So let me ask Jonathan for a second. What is wrong with Ian?

[Ian Waterman]

Ian, at the time he had his illness, had lost class of peripheral nerve cells to do with sensation. He'd lost touch, but also his movement and position sense had gone.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is this unusual? I mean, in your experience?

[Ian Waterman]

I mean, it depends who we talk to, but I normally say that we know of about six in the world.

[Robert Krulwich]

Really who are like this.

[Ian Waterman]

No one really in the world knew what proprioception did and what the effects of the loss of proprioception would be until Ian.

[Robert Krulwich]

And when they first met, Dr. Cole said to him, he said.

[Ian Waterman]

How do you manage?

[Robert Krulwich]

How do you cope with this?

[Ian Waterman]

Unbelievably, he was the first doctor to ask that question.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ian told him that on his own over the 12 years, he had figured out how to walk again and how to grasp a cup again. And he explained that he did this by carefully breaking down and then reassembling every single move he made. It started this way.

[Ian Waterman]

I was laying in bed one day in hospital and I wanted to sit up and it just wouldn't happen. And then laying there in frustration, I just thought the whole process through and I broke it down into quite simple small movements and I lay flat. I checked where absolutely everything was before I started. And then I then started with the head and folded and tucked my chin onto my chest. As if to start the first part of the curl. Then I moved my arms slightly forward and I started to tighten some muscles in my tummy and around my back. And then I started to curl myself to sit in an upright position. And when I got there, I was so damned euphoric, I nearly fell out of bed. Ian has studied movement in a way no one in history has ever studied before. No ballet? Answer. No professor of neurology has ever had to study movement the way Ian does every day.

[Robert Krulwich]

Because every day, every move that Ian makes, he has to consciously direct. It's as though Ian were two people. A puppeteer and a puppet. His mind is directing and his body is obeying. And the strings of Ian's puppet, interestingly, are his eyes.

[Ian Waterman]

My eyes. I control all my movement with my.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sight because he doesn't have this feedback information coming from his limbs back to.

[Ian Waterman]

His brain, the proprioceptive feedback, because that's missing.

[Robert Krulwich]

Unless he looks directly at the limb he wants to move, he can.

[Ian Waterman]

If I look away from. From my hand, I lose all connection with it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, what happens if. If it's dark or if the lights are out?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, you know, it's. He can't afford darkness. If the lights go out accidentally, that's.

[Ian Waterman]

Quite a dangerous place to be. I fall over.

[Robert Krulwich]

He has not turned out the lights in the night in the last decades.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Robert Krulwich]

To stay in the world in motion, he must focus. Always focus. In fact, he spent a long time just training with paper clips.

[Ian Waterman]

Yeah, I use them now occasionally, and I still don't like the little devils, you know?

[Robert Krulwich]

I mean, when you're manipulating the paperclip, what are you actually trying to figure out? How much pressure you're putting away?

[Ian Waterman]

I lost my ear.

[Robert Krulwich]

Fell off.

[Ian Waterman]

So if you could repeat that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, okay.

[Ian Waterman]

We should do.

[Robert Krulwich]

Jess, is the headphones back on yet?

[Ian Waterman]

Hang on, I'll do it.

[Robert Krulwich]

My job. By the way, is he able to put on. I mean, is this. You can tell me what's going on, but is he able to grab the headphones?

[Ian Waterman]

He can answer. I can grab the headphones and put them on, but because putting the headphones over the top of my head, I can't see exactly where the headphones are in relation to the rest of me. Although I would finally get there. It's a lot quicker if Jonathan just puts them on and he likes to feel you.

[Robert Krulwich]

So what I was asking was, what were you doing with the paper clips all that time?

[Ian Waterman]

I was given paper clips as an exercise to. To get my fingers to move again and to Threadle them together and then to unclip them. A very, very frustrating therapy. But one has to admit that it is a good one and that it takes an awful lot of fine, dexterous movement to get paperclips together and apart again.

[Robert Krulwich]

But the idea of breaking down every move you make into sub moves and sub, sub moves and then relearning everything.

[Ian Waterman]

It'S exactly very, very mentally tiring because.

[Robert Krulwich]

It takes such total concentration. What if you were walking down the street and suddenly a thought like a daydream pops into your head?

[Ian Waterman]

Jonathan has a very good memory of that, and maybe that would be good to come. Jonathan, Ian and I were walking through Oxford, having done some groundbreaking experiment or whatever, and Ian suddenly stumbled, and I'd never seen him stumble ever before. And he was looking at a pretty girl. And his thoughts had drifted from walking and from the concrete ahead of him to what he'd like to do to this girl. Well, she. She was about 18. She had nut brown hair, lovely legs, a mini skirt, and it was a navy blue dress with white polka dots.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is a family program. When Ian walks anyway, he has to.

[Ian Waterman]

Think the whole time about walking and the floor.

[Robert Krulwich]

So merely the erotic sort of charge cost you your ability to walk?

[Ian Waterman]

It could be at that sort of charge. But any distraction really took me away from my focus, which is, where is my left foot in relation to my right foot? And where am I balanced at the moment? And how am I actually going through this process? At what stage am I in this movement? And to suddenly be detracted by that, by a waft of perfume and a pretty girl took all that concentration away. It can be taken away by the song of a bird or the sound of music drifting from somewhere. Just on that day, it was a pretty girl.

[Robert Krulwich]

Today, if you saw Ian on the street, you wouldn't be able to tell that he has this handicap. He has figured out how to live a very deliberate and, in a way, kind of a normal life. He drives a car. He works.

[Jad Abumrad]

He drives a car.

[Ian Waterman]

Yeah, my latest car, which is a very nice Mercedes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do you drive the same speed as everybody else? And all around, it's faster.

[Ian Waterman]

Usually I can react as quickly as anybody else. It's an automatic car and it has hand controls. That's the only favor to my disability, really. But I tend to do with my driving what I do in the way that I manage my life, which is I plan ahead.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm just. My last question, really, for Ian, I guess, is have you solved this problem as best you can? I mean, do you feel like you're one person or do you feel cut in half, like a mind directing a body, like maybe two people?

[Ian Waterman]

I don't think about it in the way that you've just related there. I just think about, I want to get up, I want a cup of tea. And this is the process that I have to apply to do that. Yep, that's what, that's what we all do. I don't think stories like this involve heroes. They involve people who try their best under certain circumstances and are tested in a way that many of us are not. We can learn from that. You're dealt a hand and you play it as you. As best you can. There's a few scars being.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thanks to Ian Waterman and to neurologist Jonathan Cole. Dr. Cole wrote a very nice, lovely book about Ian called Pride and Daily Marathon. They spoke to us together from the BBC studios in Southampton.

[Ian Waterman]

That was fun. Gosh, I really should read the book.

[Jim Winery]

You know.

[Ian Waterman]

Who's buying lunch? God, this room doesn't get any bigger, does it? It's a nightmare.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're listening to Radio Land from New York Public Radio, Public Radio, WNYCNYC and npr. Hey, this is Chelsea from Atlanta, Georgia.

[Jim Winery]

Where the cicadas are singing Radiolab, supported.

[Jad Abumrad]

In part by the National Science foundation.

[Jim Winery]

And by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

[Jad Abumrad]

Enhancing public understanding of science and technology.

[Jim Winery]

In the modern world.

[Robert Krulwich]

More information about [e-mail]. how does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and a.

[Jad Abumrad]

Problem for our climate?

[Robert Krulwich]

What is leadership in 2025 and beyond? The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest.

[Jad Abumrad]

Questions and the most complicated ideas, ideas.

[Robert Krulwich]

Of our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

And today on our program, we're looking at brains and bodies and how sometimes brains and bodies can get wildly out of sync. And let me offer one more flavor on this theme, which has to do with something that neuropsychologist Paul Brocks calls body schema.

[Jim Winery]

Body schema is the brain's sort of.

[Ian Waterman]

Working model of the body.

[Jad Abumrad]

In order for the brain to keep track of where you are, where everything is, it creates an inner representation of you. This is what he thinks a model, very much in the virtual reality sense of where it thinks you are in space and where it thinks you aren't.

[Ian Waterman]

The point is that we, although we think there's a very solid distinction between where our bodies end and the World begins. In fact, the brain has to work quite hard to produce this kind of consistency of experience. And clearly it can go wrong.

[Jad Abumrad]

This brings us to pilots.

[Jim Winery]

Okay, my name is Dan fulghum. I spent 32 years in the Air Force, 25 that in active flying. And this incident occurred in July of 1952 at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.

[Jad Abumrad]

Our story begins on a normal training day. It was really hot in the cockpit.

[Jim Winery]

Flying down at low level. Below 3,000ft is over 100 degrees.

[Jad Abumrad]

And Colonel Dan Fulgent was on his fifth run, flying in formation, doing a training maneuver he'd done a million times before. But this time, something happened. He pulled the plane up hard, rolled.

[Jim Winery]

Out, and the next thing I knew, I was seemed to be sitting up on the back of the airplane, looking down into the cockpit.

[Jad Abumrad]

Suddenly he was outside the plane, not inside.

[Jim Winery]

I could see what was going on. I could see the ground. I could see another airplane.

[Jad Abumrad]

And when he looked in the cockpit where he was supposed to be, he could see a pilot.

[Jim Winery]

I was watching myself not knowing it was me. What's going on here? I'm just gonna watch this for a little while.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he just sat there on the wing of his own plane, watching himself fly the plane.

[Jim Winery]

And just all of a sudden the curtain snaps up and you realize, no, it's not a dream, actually, that's me in the cockpit and I'm flying the airplane again. But we began to realize at Luke that in the eight weeks of training period that I was there, we lost nine pilots.

[Robert Krulwich]

They died?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Jim Winery]

Wow. And most of them were running into the ground or running into each other in the air and that sort of thing. And that's an awful lot of pilots to lose just in training.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, fast forward. Many years army engineers are studying this problem and they've figured out some stuff about it, but not much. And then along comes this guy.

[Jim Winery]

I'm Jim Winery.

[Jad Abumrad]

Jim Winery is his name.

[Jim Winery]

I'm at the Federal Aviation Administration Aeromedical Research program.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he had a radical notion. If we're going to really understand this, I mean really get to the bottom of this, we have to induce this experience on purpose.

[Robert Krulwich]

Make them go blank. Make them go, yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Create the conditions that exist in a fighter jet on the ground in a controlled environment so they can study this. His idea was, let's put pilots in.

[Jim Winery]

A centrifuge, this big centrifuge, one of.

[Jad Abumrad]

These things that the astronauts use. Got a 50 foot arm that spins.

[Jim Winery]

Round and round, round and around. And on the end of that 50 foot arm.

[Jad Abumrad]

There's a cockpit.

[Jim Winery]

A cockpit.

[Jad Abumrad]

A pretend cockpit mocked up to be.

[Jim Winery]

Exactly like what a fighter aircraft might be like, with all the controls, the screens, the throttle.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's where the pilot sits and gets spun around real fast.

[Robert Krulwich]

I see.

[Jad Abumrad]

So Winery put out a call for volunteers.

[Jim Winery]

I'm Tim Sestak. Commander sestak. I met Dr. Winnery. He was one of the ones that got involved in his research, heroically volunteered to fly the centrifuge and to deliberately knock himself out. Scared? Pilots don't do scared.

[Ian Waterman]

Three, two, one, Pressure.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is a recording from the experiment.

[Jim Winery]

The task was to chase this little airplane. So I'd sit there, and you'd follow it, and first couple maneuvers would be, you know, three GS.

[Robert Krulwich]

G forces is the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it's like when you're on a roller coaster. Five GS, that force that pins you back in your seat.

[Jim Winery]

Yeah. Seven GS.

[Jad Abumrad]

Except really, on a roller coaster, you're only ever gonna experience about two GS.

[Jim Winery]

And then nine GS.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nothing like these guys.

[Jim Winery]

The high G forces hurt. The skin on your face sags. Your eyelids sag so low that. That you can't see out from under them. You wind up tilting your head back to look out from under your own eyelids that are sagging down in front of your face. Meanwhile, you're tensing all your leg muscles and your abdominal muscles and your arm muscles as hard as you can. You learn to use your body to fight it. And what you do is you tense every muscle from your toes to your calves and thighs. Push it out. Push it all the way up, all the way up. Okay? And you take a breath, and you start to say the word hook. And you hold it for three seconds, and then you finish it off by finishing the K of the hook. So these pilots, they sound like they're wrestling or fighting or something. They're grunting and groaning and making all these hook noises. It's like that. The most G I've ever pulled was 12.4 GS.

[Jad Abumrad]

Just to give you a sense of what that might feel like for a pilot like Tim Sestak, who weighs about 200 pounds. Once he makes a 12.4g turn, his body goes from 200 pounds to. To almost 2,500 pounds. So that's like over the weight of.

[Robert Krulwich]

A car because of the pressure pushing down on him.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, exactly. More crucially, says Winery, those G forces pull blood.

[Jim Winery]

The blood violently from the brain is pushed from the head down toward the feet, and it pools in the abdomen and the lower extremities. And when it pools down there, it can't get back up to the brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

And that's when the problems start.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, this doesn't sound very good.

[Jad Abumrad]

No. Dr. Winery documented a particular sequence that happens when blood is pulled from the brain.

[Jim Winery]

The first thing you lose is vision. Usually the first thing to go are your eyes and you have what's called gray out or loss of peripheral vision, and you start getting tunnel vision. Then you go through blackout where you can see nothing. You lose your sight, and then if you take the acceleration forces a little higher, you'll lose consciousness. When I woke up, I remember just sitting there and I'm in this little white space. I actually had no idea who I was, who am I, where I was or what I was doing. Why am I doing this? So I'm sitting in this little white ball and I'm looking around and what is this all about? I hear this beeping, there's this white light beeping. And then at that moment I realize that I'm in a little room and that I'm supposed to do something and that one of the things I'm supposed to do is press that button. So I press the button and at that moment I realized, holy mackerel, I'm a pilot. I'm in an airplane and I'm not sure flying it. And I grabbed the controls and then just a giant rush. I'm Tim Sestak. Holy mackerel, I'm Tim Sestak. I'm Tim Sestak. I'm a pilot. I'm flying in the centrifuge. All came back to me at once and I was, okay. Commander Sestack, Dr. Bennett, how you feeling.

[VS Ramachandran]

Again?

[Jim Winery]

Like I've been gone a long time.

[Jad Abumrad]

Over the course of 50 winery tested about 500 pilots in the centrevuge. He recorded their experiences, measured everything he could think of, and he found a few things. First, that the average blackout lasted somewhere between 12 and 24 seconds.

[Robert Krulwich]

24 seconds?

[Jim Winery]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

And while blacked out, this is the interesting thing, pilots experienced these strange little visions.

[Robert Krulwich]

Visions.

[Jim Winery]

I'll give you an example of the individual that lost consciousness, had convulsive movements where he was moving his arms forward and back for about two or three seconds. When he came to, we asked him what had happened. He said, yeah, it was a nice warm day and I was out at the lake fishing. All of a sudden I could feel like I had about a five pound bass on my line. And he was tugging and each time he tugged, I Would pull back. And then all of a sudden I was back in the centrifuge. I don't know what happened.

[Jad Abumrad]

These little dreamlets winner. He thinks, this is the brain confused. It's cut off. Meaning, think of it from the brain's perspective. It's lost the body, and yet the body is convulsing, trying to get blood back up to the brain. The brain has no idea why it's convulsing. It just sees arms flailing about and it thinks, well, my arms are jerking back and forth. I must be bass fishing.

[Jim Winery]

The things that are happening around you frequently get incorporated into those short dreamlets.

[Jad Abumrad]

Here's one of his own. Turns out he has tested himself in the centrifuge many times.

[Jim Winery]

The little dreamlit that I had, I was going down the aisle of a grocery store, floating, if you will. I don't know that I was on a magic carpet, but I sure wasn't having to walk. And I was just really motivated to try to pick up some ice cream. As I was going down the aisle and I was moving down through there and I see could see the freezer. I knew the ice cream was over there and I just could not move my hand over to get it. The next thing I realized was I was trying to turn off the buzzer in the centrifuge with my hand and I could hear it. I could not move it. And then just momentarily, I got the ability to have motor control return and I could turn it.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't know where I am.

[Jim Winery]

Honest to God, don't know where the hell I am. I thought I was at the grocery.

[Ian Waterman]

Store.

[Robert Krulwich]

By the way.

[Jim Winery]

The other thing is, I couldn't control my arm to get the sound off either. That's interesting.

[Jad Abumrad]

This recording you're listening to is from a day when Dr. Winery blacked out five times in a row.

[Jim Winery]

I don't remember anything on that one.

[Jad Abumrad]

And after that fifth run, which about to hear, something weird happened.

[Ian Waterman]

Let you take a break just a.

[Jim Winery]

Few seconds, catch your breath. I don't know about that one. I don't remember starting that one last ride coming up. God, I don't if you can take one more. I'm hesitating because I'm not ready yet. I'm hesitating because I'm not quite ready yet. Okay, just let me know whenever you get ready. Go ahead and relax. Let your blood flow through your brain a little bit. Okay, I'm ready for the last one, I guess.

[Ian Waterman]

Okay, final checklist.

[Jim Winery]

Data station.

[Ian Waterman]

Data station is ready.

[Jim Winery]

Operator.

[Ian Waterman]

Operator, is Ready, Medical? Medical is ready. Final ready, please. Okay, sir, final ready has been activated.

[Jim Winery]

Are you ready? God, yes. I'm going up this time, right?

[Ian Waterman]

Yes, sir.

[Jim Winery]

I remember going up on this one.

[Ian Waterman]

Yes, sir.

[Jim Winery]

Three, two, one, Pressure. I think that one's enough.

[Jad Abumrad]

At the end of that last run, Dr. Winery got off the centrifuge woozy and stumbled down the hall.

[Jim Winery]

I was really confused when I got off the centrifuge and I was walking down the hall back to my laboratory and all of a sudden I began to realize that I was above and behind myself and I could see somebody who was myself walking down the hall. And I said, oh man, that's unusual.

[Jad Abumrad]

Pilots are generally not new Age kind of guys, but at least 40 of them in Wintery's study did report what he just described. Having an out of body experience. Weirder still, an even smaller sub subgroup reported seeing the classic tunnel with white light type thing. All Dr. Winery can say is that that last sub subgroup, they were the ones who were out the longest, they had the most intense blackouts. He's not ready to draw any conclusions, but he does suspect that the dreamlets, the visions of seeing yourself from above, even the tunnel and white lights, it's all part of the same situation. The brain is just confused at having lost the body. Ann Hepperman and Kara Oler produced that piece for us. Thank you to them and thanks also to our pilots, Dan Fulghum, Tim Sestak and of course Jim Winley. Wow, that's all the time we have. For more information on anything you heard this hour, Visit our website, Radiolab.org and while you are there, send us an email. Our email address. You know it?

[Robert Krulwich]

Uh, no.

[Jad Abumrad]

Come on, I never really learned it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Radiolab.org or something like that?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, that's our website address. If you would like to email us. We do like to get email. The address is radiolabnyc.org I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Kutlidge.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks for listening.

[Jim Winery]

Radiolab is produced by Jod Abumrad and Ellen Horn, with help from Sarah Pellegrini, Sally Herships, Melissa Keeble, Lulu Miller, Amber Seeley and Brett Byer. Special thanks to Arwen Curry, Tamar Lewin, Nick Cappadoci and Keith Scott, Production management by Dean Capello and Michael Elsesore. And a very special thanks to me. I'm Tim Sestak, fully conscious and happy to be speaking to you from this side of the great divide. Radiolab is produced by New York Public Radio, WNYC and distributed by ndr. Okay, thanks.