Mind Field

Scientists can’t dissect living people’s brains to study their function. But by examining the behavior of people whose brains are atypical (due to stroke, injury, or being born that way), we can learn a lot about all our brains. In this episode, I travel to London to meet a blind, autistic savant with astonishing musical abilities, and I volunteer to have my own brain’s function temporarily disrupted at UCLA’s Neuromodulation Lab.