The building is locked. Most of the windows are dark. But in a small room on the first floor of the Waisman Center, a group of four is gathered around Richard Davidson. It’s 8:30 p.m., and most people are at home letting their own minds unwind, trying to slough off a day’s work. But Davidson has shown up in the night to have his brain scanned, to have his mind read.
Actually, he’s here to read his own mind.
The room is lined with computer screens, and there is a small window that looks into the next room to the giant white MRI machine, which pulls mountains of data out of people’s brains. The four scientists are here to run the programs and sort through that data, mining it for nuggets of scientific gold.
“So,what are we doing?” Davidson asks crisply. He’s dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, as if this were no big deal to be here, peering into his own brain.