Neurosurgeon Who Worked on 'Severance' Says Scientists Are Close to Developing the Show's Technology

"We are not at the stage yet, as depicted in the show, but I would say we are not far off"

BY Alex HudsonPublished Mar 24, 2022

Severance is amazing! Apple TV+'s mind-blowing new sci-fi show concerns a theoretical technology that allows workers to separate their consciousness into two halves: their work self and their out-of-work self, neither of whom know anything about what their counterpart gets up to. It's an intriguing premise that gets more and more terrifying as the show plays out — and, according to the neurosurgeon who consulted on the show, we're actually not that far off from that kind of procedure being possible.

Dr. Vijay Agarwal (Director of Montefiore Skull-Base Tumor Center in Bronx, NY), who worked with the show for years, was tasked with projecting current neuroscientific advancements into the future and imagining what the brain might one day be able to do.

He told Variety, "We are not at the stage yet, as depicted in the show, but I would say we are not far off. Right now, big academic centres, big neurosurgery, neuroscience centres are able to get micro catheters into the brain. They are able to adjust functions, like movement and tremor. They do that by putting electrical pulses into the middle of the brain and into the areas of the brain that are not functioning accurately. We're actually able to put little catheters in the brain and hear single neurons firing. What the public may not be aware of is that we are much closer to this type of technology and this ability than we have ever been before." Yikes!

Dr. Agarwal pointed to recent developments that allow people to control machines with their brains as indicators of where technology is headed: "All across the world, researchers are currently helping people who have trouble with movements, and a whole host of other neurological disorders." We learned of such a procedure this week, when an ALS patient without mobility used a brain implant to ask to listen to Tool.

Interestingly, Dr. Agarwal appears onscreen in Severance. In the second episode, when one of the devices gets installed in someone's brain, he plays the doctor who performs the procedure.

Read Exclaim!'s 10/10 review of Severance here.

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