Frank Tong is peering into another man’s mind. The Vanderbilt University neuroscientist is sitting in front of a bank of monitors inside a dimly lit room. On the other side of a plate-glass window, an undergraduate lies immobile, his legs protruding from a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. A display unit above the young man’s eyes flashes a picture of a pigeon or a penguin—at this point Tong doesn’t know which. A low roaring reverberates through the room as the scanner sends powerful waves of magnetic energy cascading through the subject’s cranium.
