And to our right, my students, we have Janie.

As you can see, Janie is floating in the middle of that tank, staring up as if into space, and as if possessed by something unknown. But make no mistake: Janie is not possessed. Janie is merely unaware.

What happened with Janie is a simple thing. As she donated her mind and body to knowledge, to science, she submitted to an experiment and study of the human brain.

Immersed in our experiences, many of us tend to go throughout life unaware of the things our brains are running as background processes. So we decided to ask: What would happen if we took away those background processes?

In order to do this, we first had to take away certain experiences. Certain memories—things that would shape the whole of a person entirely, things that would define such a person forever. So what we did with Janie is we put her into a different place, away from human society, and we took away all the memories she’d ever had with it. Thus, with no relationships to be defined by, she instead defined her identity with the things she had and what she’d created independently of humans, building only with physical tools, specifically not comparing herself to others as a background process in her mind.

To see where this would go further, we then took away her ability to interact with the world and all her memories she’d had with that as well. She was still able to perceive the scenes in front of her and experience them, and so we fed her these sensory experiences as her life went on and on.

Eventually though, we took away her sight, and her visual memories. Then hearing. Then smell, taste, and touch. At that point, we thought we were done, but as we kept her in the tank, we realized that she could sense shifts in the pressure and movement of her own body—otherwise known as body-kinesthetic perceptions, and so we put her into a chamber devoid of movement and gravity.

And there she floats, unaware of any temporal differences. Unaware of time entirely, since she has no past moments of perception to compare the current ones to.

Now I want you to look at her, in that tank. Does she look happy? No. Does she look sad? No. She looks merely brain-dead. Janie is in there, but only technically. Her body’s in that tank, but her brain distinguishes nothing. Instead, it is just mush, making the life she has in her mind only an instant, and only one of pure nothingness, to be experienced on and on indefinitely.

We are very grateful for her extremely generous contribution.