A few weeks ago, in the hospital canteen, a medical intern was brag-swaggering about ‘improved prediction of buying behaviour based on fMRI readings of increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex’. He was momentarily reduced to a pile of crumpled clothes when the pretty nurse he was with couldn’t see why this was such a big deal. When he explained that even those who sincerely intend to purchase a product or change their buying behaviour in the future often don’t go through with it, she became far more interested in the fact that people don’t know their own minds than in his breakthrough. She was toy-ploying with him. I don’t like the canteen much, but sitting quietly and eating or very slowly sipping tea is essential for staying ahead of the neuromarketing swerve. I call it reconloitering – one of the great advantages of working at the hospital. That’s how I know I need You to tap-dance across my prefrontal cortex in a show of consumer enthusiasm.
After days of indecision, I’ve chosen to patch into a supermarket multivitamin – ‘Multipilclass="underline" You times ten.’ Yes, I know I shouldn’t be taken in by the slogan and that it probably won’t make You any different to what You usually are. But my reasons are good. No tactile or gustatory product benefits (it’s advertised as having ‘swift-swallow tasteless capsule technology’). Therefore, no LipService drift to threaten dangerous brushes with tastures. It’s impossible to know what they would do if they discovered that my touch-taste tangles survived the haemorrhage. Trying to guess, my imagination goes into free fall – brain surgery, reconditioning therapy, chemical correctives? Multipill is also a choice that shows I care about my health but am not such a social climber as to go for a designer supplement cocktail.
I’m met by a Dr Bromide rather than the usual brain hacks who conduct standard testing. The presence of the doctor means they have found something in the baseline data. Only high-value research subjects – influentials, ebrandgelists, celebrities or anomalies – are flagged for qualitative projects run by doctors, rather than broad quantitative capture. There’s no other reason to be interested in me. I don’t have the status quo-tient. I desperately start trying to reel in my nerves, recoil the fibres of feeling deep between the organs and leave my skin dead and dumb. Instead the anxiety sends me into a fizz like a snail sprinkled with salt.
I’m taken for the fMRI first. My time inside the tunnel starts as usual with watching a series of product images and new TV commercials. I focus on letting You do the thinking. It’s all quite ordinary until an ad comes on for an antiseptic showing a mother cleaning the graze on a kid’s knee with a cotton wool swab. At that moment, a tuft of cotton wool is pressed into my hand. I don’t hear or see any of the techs approach because of the noise of the magnetic coils and the ad’s soundtrack coming through the earphones. The surprise contact almost makes me choke on cheap spirit vinegar. A little while later, the wad is removed from my hand and a rubber ball takes its place – just as a man throws a similar ball for a collie in a dog-biscuit ad. I hate rubber; it burns with chilli agonies down my throat and nose. Even with the cage that closes over my face and the bolsters to keep my head from moving, I’ve never been claustrophobic inside the machine bore. But as my gullet blisters and irrationality spreads like inflammation, I feel unable to escape, unable to control the stimulus or my response. I realise I’m yelling into the microphone for them to get me out.
One of the techs brings me a glass of water to drink in the consultation room while I wait for Dr Bromide. Lifting the glass, I spill some.
He’s already speaking when he comes in: ‘I hypothesised increased cortical excitement of the left anterior insula in response to tactile stimulation.’ I don’t know whether he’s addressing me. But there’s no one else in the room.
‘The results validate this entirely. Influence of media persuasiveness on the subject is, however, inconclusive.’ Then I notice him press the button on a voice recorder in his breast pocket. His smile is the kind usually only achieved with a dental retractor.
‘It must be apparent by now that we are treating this case involving cross-modal interaction and the corresponding gustatory hallucination.’
He is now definitely talking to me but also about me – as if I’m not the test subject under discussion. It creates the disquieting sense that the person in the MRI hadn’t really been me at all. What if he’s making an appeal to You?
‘Further investigation of the neurological mechanisms of this syndrome and its potential genetic markers are a scientific imperative. But we can’t let the sympathetic nervous response in the MRI adversely affect our efforts by developing into avoidance behaviour.’
I cling sweatily to the words that give me history, continuity and the memory of Dad – genetic markers: ‘The… the tastes are naturally sourced from my father?’
I’d hoped Multipill would be a useful brand in a medical context but somehow, whatever LipService I choose, my words always sound idiotic in my own ears.
‘No, via the X chromosome.’
‘My mother?’ The woman who did nothing when the principal pulled me out of class and the other kids started picking on me. And all the time she knew – experienced tastures herself? Even You are surprised.
‘Since social adaptation through brand identification has reduced patient zero’s concurrent response to the tactile inducers, our present case is all the more critical for data collection. Patient zero was accordingly instructed under threat of corporate redundancy to prevent research bias due to demand characteristics in the development of the new subject’s cross-talk between sensory systems. Now that the subject’s neural pathways have been established, patient zero’s influence is less of a factor.’
The horror of what he says is a shuddering palsy, a loss of control that it appears I never had. And Mother? I always thought she chose Frisson Froufrou, chose to ignore my off-brand behaviour and its causes. Was that her kindness? To discourage me from the things that would only lead me like a lab rat into Dr Bromide’s maze? But what has it helped? The flavours are involuntary and perhaps all the rest of my life was as preprogrammed as LipService.
Is she relieved now that she’s losing her taste? One less unwanted jerk and twitch in response to a doctor’s reflex hammer?
‘Can we continue with the procedure? Need I remind you that failure to cooperate with consumer health research objectives constitutes a refusal of care?’ says Dr Bromide.
I stand up on legs that aren’t mine and follow him out the door.
A postnasal drip of liver pâté creeps down my throat from the cold moist sponges strapped to my head. They contain electrodes, and the liquid is an electrolyte solution. Stillwell, one of the lab techs assisting Dr Bromide, explains this in a soft voice as he wires me to a small box. Techs are normally aloof, guarding against over-identification with the subject. The fear must be quivering off me – a haze from hot tarmac distorting the horizon. And it’s true, I can’t see past the mirage, the possibility of pain. Even if Stillwell says, ‘Transcranial direct current stimulation is a non-nociceptive procedure.’
After overseeing the placement of the electrodes on my head, Dr Bromide takes Stillwell aside. I can’t hear his instructions but the repetitive stabbing of his right index finger into the opposite palm mimics an anaesthetist failing to find the vein and achieve the desired surrender. The tech looks nervous. The door to the lab opens and Dr Bromide abruptly stops needling Stillwell and announces to the room, ‘As part of medicorporate cooperation, copywriter Wordini will now administer the prescribed tests.’ With that he sweeps out past the copywriter without a greeting or a second glance.