Alex Boese

“The curious thing was that not a single experiment had ever suggested a link between listening to Mozart’s music and increased infant intelligence. The closest an experiment had come to making this connection was a 1997 study, again by Rauscher, that demonstrated a relationship between piano lessons and improved spatial-reasoning skills among preschoolers.”
― Alex Boese, Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments

“Twenty-one years after the release of Kubrick’s film, a strangely similar scene played out in a University of California laboratory—with one major difference. In Alex’s place was an adult cat. Researchers led by Dr. Yang Dan, an assistant professor of neurobiology, anesthetized a cat with Sodium Pentothal, chemically paralyzed it with Norcuron, and secured it tightly in a surgical frame. They then glued metal posts to the whites of its eyes, forcing it to look at a screen. Scene after scene played on the screen, but instead of images of graphic violence, the cat had to watch something almost as terrifying—swaying trees and turtleneck-wearing men. This was not a form of Clockwork Orange–style aversion therapy for cats. Instead, it was a remarkable attempt to tap into another creature’s brain and see directly through its eyes. The researchers had inserted fiber electrodes into the vision-processing center of the cat’s brain, a small group of cells called the lateral geniculate nucleus. The electrodes measured the electrical activity of the cells and transmitted this information to a nearby computer. Software then decoded the information and transformed it into a visual image.”
― Alex Boese, Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments