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Wired

Wired

Can a person’s mind really be split in two?

Wired
Summary
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66% Informative

The sci-fi TV show Severance imagines a world where a person’s work and personal lives are surgically separated.

Jon Pack : The concept of this gripping piece of science fiction is far-fetched but it touches on a question neuroscience has been trying to answer for decades : Can a person's mind really be split in two ? Pack: In Severance, both the innie and the outie have access to speech.

This is reminiscent of “the doorway effect,” the phenomenon in which walking through a doorway makes you forget something.

Perhaps, in Severance, the hippocampus’ interest in spatial boundaries triggers the switch between innie and outie.

Unfortunately, there are two crucial flaws with the idea that the show’s severance procedure could involve a simple snip to the hippocampus.