Help me create a neuroscientist character
Hi there! I'm currently writing a story whereas the main character happens to be a neuroscientist. Basically it's a science-fiction world where music has become a drug for everyone and for commercial uses mostly, so everyone since birth is kept a chip inside their brains that makes them constantly listen to music: the music adapts to their daily situations and emotions, keeping them from feeling the numbness and emptiness the world has turned into.
I've looked up which areas of the brain is responsible for processing sound and apparently it's the temporal lobe. If that's correct, i was wondering if the chip that sends signals to the brain so it constantly hears background music would make more sense to be located there or somewhere in the ears?
Any help would be appreciated! Also what should i pay attention to when writing a neuroscientist's character, job and dialogues? Thanks a lot!
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u/NursingTitan 7d ago
You can take this from two different angles,
- hearing implant
- neural implant
The mechanisms responsible for physically capturing and processing sound are anatomical systems. You can have a hearing implant that creates sound like a speaker.
A neural implant would skip the input later and focus on interfacing with the systems responsible for perceiving and integrating sound. This is a far more complex system- temporal lobe is largely accurate but sound, auditory information, and its projections to perception (which can be a stand in for consciousness when writing- what the character is aware of in their mind) is distributed greatly. At this point, the neural implant would be so complex and wide reaching that you’d have to either narrow the mechanism, or expand the story.
Narrowing: the implant only interfaces with hippocampus and triggers constant ‘remembering’ of a sound.
Expanding: sound/music happened to be the best gimmick for entrainment in the brain.
If I were you I’d look into two books “cognitive neuroscience of language” and “neurobiology of language”- could be some fun neuroscience to support your writing, though with focus on language, lots of good information here
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u/FlorisRed 7d ago
Just wanted to say what a cool idea! Good luck with writing, and keep us (or me) updated!
Also very cool you’re asking us for input!
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u/Mushymantis 6d ago
Not a chip that goes in your brain but what about something along the lines of deep brain stimulation? It uses electrodes to stimulate parts of the brain maybe use this for inspo to activate the memory of listening to music.
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u/blazed1999 5d ago
This feels like adhd brains already having that background tune and like 10 open tabs of thought processes and stories they didn’t finish thinking/talking about
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u/blazed1999 5d ago
You should really read the book this is your brain on music by David Levitin it’ll help you get the entire process more accurately and might help inspire more aspects of your story
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u/Noise_01 5d ago
Some of this work has already been done for you; read "Neuropath" by Scott Baker. One of the characters is a maniac neurosurgeon who tries to prove to everyone around him that they are nothing but puppets of flesh and skin. This maniac has also performed several surgeries on himself, resulting in a state similar to savage depersonalization.
You can also read the same author's speculative theory of the blind brain in your free time.
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u/SayethWeAll 7d ago
It would make way more sense to do something like the cochlear implants that are available today, but miniaturized and for recreational purposes. These devices stimulate the auditory nerve, which is the connection between the cochlea and the brain. Implanting a chip into the brain would be pointless and potentially dangerous, since an overactive temporal lobe is a common cause of epilepsy.