Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [59]
To find out how my hippocampus measured up, Gilbertson generously agreed to scan my brain and run me through a full day of cognitive testing. I was a little nervous, admittedly. Did I really want to know the answer? Rationally, I knew size wasn’t everything. But if I had a small hippocampus, wouldn’t it make me lose confidence in my own ability to endure hardship? Would it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? But given the chance, passing up the MRI was like trying to walk past a mirror. I couldn’t help but check myself out.
A few days before the MRI, Gilbertson e-mailed me to make sure I had no shrapnel in my body. I did not. He never once complained, but I could tell that he had had to placate a platoon of lawyers and bureaucrats in order to take a look at my brain. As a reporter, I fell well outside of the normal research-subject category. He had me sign a long consent form that he had designed just for me. “This is mostly just in case we find something,” he said. “Oh, like a tumor?” I said. “Yes,” he said. Insanely, I remained more worried about the size of my hippocampus. Why wasn’t he worried they would find no hippocampus at all? What then?
On a rainy Sunday morning in May of 2007, we met in Boston at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. I got terribly lost in the maze of Boston streets and showed up a half hour late, sweaty and apologetic. Gilbertson, wearing a sports jacket and tiny rectangular glasses pushed up on his forehead, smiled and told me not to worry. He suggested that I take a moment to relax. I thanked him and joked that I had been late on purpose; I’d wanted to make sure my brain had marinated in stress hormones before the exam. He laughed. I was hoping he would reassure me by stating the obvious—that my hippocampus remains the same size, regardless of how late I am. But he didn’t. As we rode up in the elevator, I was sure I could feel my hippocampus shrinking. I asked him if he’d ever scanned his own brain. “No, I haven’t,” he said pensively, as if the idea had never occurred to him.
At the MRI suite, I was fitted with a bracelet and officially admitted into the hospital. Then, just before I climbed into the machine, Gilbertson shook my hand: “Good luck! I’ll be watching your brain!” I scanned his face for sarcasm, but there was none. This is a man who has seen hundreds if not thousands of brains by now. But he seemed genuinely excited.
After a half hour of clanking and drilling, the test was over, and I was handed a CD of my brain. Then Gilbertson briefly showed me my hippocampus on the screen. “You have them!” he announced. (There are actually two in your brain, one on each side.) I chuckled, deeply relieved, and we left for his office in New Hampshire. It would take about a week for him to complete the precise measurements.
In the meantime, there was another way to test how well my hippocampus was functioning. The next day, I met Gilbertson at his office at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Manchester, New Hampshire. I arrived early this time. He had planned a full day of cognitive testing—dozens of more old-fashioned ways to measure the size and functioning of my hippocampus. Gilbertson led me into a room with a wide monitor and a La-Z-Boy chair covered with soft blankets. Beverlee, a nurse in his office who administers some of the tests, encouraged me to put my feet up. The researchers in Gilbertson’s office pride themselves on treating their subjects with great care. Normally, they are dealing with combat veterans, many with posttraumatic stress disorder.
The first test was a nicer version of what mice and rats have been doing in stress labs for many years. It’s called the Morris Water Task. The rodents have to swim around a murky pool and find a submerged platform, hopefully before they die. In my case, I just had to navigate around a bright blue computer-generated pool with a joystick until I came across the underwater platform. Then the test