Movie neurobabble: Total Recall's 'schizoid embolism'
Many films include elements of neuroscience. But is it just complex-sounding nonsense, or does it make actual sense? This week, we look at Paul Verhoeven's 1991 sci-fi classic 'Total Recall'
Surprisingly often, a work of mainstream (science) fiction will include a hefty dose of neuroscience. And when you’re a neuroscientist yourself, it can often be quite… jarring. Because it often makes little to no sense.
But then, sometimes it does. Perhaps because the writers actually did their research. Or maybe they’ve just lucked out.
Sometimes it’s just blatant laziness. Other times it’s something so audacious you just have to let it slide, out of respect.
Stuff like this, this movie neurobabble, really fascinates me. So, I’m going to start sharing my takes on it with my dear readers, in the hope the will find it similarly intriguing.
The first example of Movie Neurobabble I’ll be tackling is from the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi classic, Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoeven.
I actually discussed this film at length on a recent episode of the popular podcast SMERSH POD, with host John Rain and fellow Welsh comic person Dan Thomas. You should check it out.1
Anyway, here’s the my appraisal of the central neuroscientific conceit of this particular sci-fi classic.
[And if such warnings are needed for three-and-a-half-decade old films… spoilers ahead].
Film: Total Recall [1991 version, not the 2012 version with Colin Farrell that nobody remembers (ironically)]
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Ronny Cox, a lot of people who prompt you to say “Oh yeah, them! They’re in loads of things”.
Director: Paul Verhoeven.
Plot Summary: In 2084, Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) is a construction worker who has a deep burning urge to go to the human colony on Mars, despite his wife (Stone) constantly trying to unsubtly dissuade him, and rolling news coverage revealing that it’s an active war zone due to conflicts between the controlling corporate powers ruled by Cohaagen (Cox) and the rebel forces, led by the mysterious ‘Kuato’.
Quaid opts to go to ‘Rekall’, a company which implants novel memories of exotic vacations directly into your brain, so you can feel like you went somewhere, without having actually been.
Arriving at Rekall, Quaid is told that they can also give him memories of being a different (i.e. more exciting) person. He chooses to be a secret agent.
However, something goes wrong during the procedure, which ends with Quaid being sedated and sent home. Upon waking, his co-workers and wife are trying to kill him. The latter informs him that the life he remembers is actually the implanted reality and he’s not who he thinks he is, but she’s stalling him as reinforcements arrive.
Quaid escapes, and discovers that he supposedly really is a secret agent, named Hauser, who did work for Cohaagen on Mars, but switched to the rebel side, and his Quaid identity is an implanted deep cover disguise on Earth. But now that he’s been rumbled, the ‘secrets in his head’ could provide victory for the rebel cause, so he must “get his ass to Mars”. He does this.
Keeping ahead of Cohaagen’s agents and security forces, Quaid finds the rebels, many of whom are mutants with strange abilities (or three breasts) and meets Kuato, a parasitic twin with psychic powers. Kuato explores Quaids memories and discovers that the mysterious alien construction (which has been repeatedly alluded to several times at this point) is actually a massive atmosphere generator, which will give Mars air by detonating all the planets volatile… unobtanium, over a deeply buried glacier.
Cohaagen’s power stems from his monopoly on unobtanium mining and air supplying, so he’s not keen on this outcome.
Unfortunately, the rebels are immediately double crossed and Kuato is killed. Coohagen retrieves Quaid and reveals that Hauser was actually his friend, and they came up with this plan together, to gain access and take out the rebels once and for all.
However, after busting out of the memory-resetting procedure, and leaving a lot of bodies in his wake, Quaid and Cohaagen have a final showdown. Both end up being blown out into the lethal Martian atmosphere. But not before Quaid sets off the alien machine.
While Cohaagen gruesomely expires on the surface of Mars, Quaid is saved by the newly created atmosphere, which frees all the rebels and colonists from Cohaagen’s grip. And so everyone is happy.
…or are they?
Yes, they are.
Key neuroscience concern: The whole plot, and much of the intrigue about what’s actually happening, revolves around Quaid’s procedure at Rekall going awry. The techs who are meant to implanting Quaid’s memories say he’s experienced a “schizoid embolism”, which throws the whole process into chaos.
Without that happening, presumably Quaid wakes up with a bizarre new set of memories about being a spy on Mars, then goes home and resumes his humdrum existence of being a man mountain married to a constantly-amorous Sharon Stone.
But because it does go wrong, the sinister forces keeping Quaid under control are alerted and try to kill or kidnap him, setting the whole narrative in motion.
There’s also the question, hanging over the whole film from that point on, is any of this actually happening? Random guy tries to have a memory of being a secret agent on Mars implanted into his head, it goes wrong somehow, and now it transpires that he is a secret agent on Mars. Bit of a coincidence?
That was supposedly an aspect that the viewer was meant to be left wondering about. It’s even addressed again later in the film, muddying the waters further.
Of course, as my esteemed colleague Dan points out, why would someone’s hallucination include two totally different people talking about stuff somewhere else entirely? The uncertainty does break down a bit there.
But let’s get to the key point; is a schizoid embolism an actual thing?
No, no it isn’t.
An embolism is what happens when something blocks a blood vessel, and it ruptures. The ‘schizoid’ label suggests schizophrenia, or issues under that umbrella, implying a distorted perception of reality and subsequent anomalous behaviour.
There’s no real link between these two things, so ‘schizoid embolism’ seems like some random merging of two medical-sounding words, dropped in to make the dialogue sound more technical.
Given how the whole plot stems from this ‘schizoid embolism’, does that mean Total Recall is marked as a neuroscience ‘FAIL’.
Well, not quite…
Brains of the future: It’s often unfair to criticise sci-fi or fantasy films according to what we know in the real world, because they don’t claim to be happening in the real world. So, we should judge them by the parameters of the world in which the story occurs.
So, while in 2025 there’s no such thing as a schizoid embolism, Total Recall takes place in 2084, nearly 60 years from now.
And in this version of 2084, having new memories directly inserted into your brain is on a par with getting a tattoo; something you can do on the high street, as long as you make an appointment.
Clearly, the science of memory in 2084 is far beyond our current real-world understanding.
However, even now, it’s widely agreed that memories in the brain are supported by connections between key neurons, and our memory as we know it is made up of wildly complex, ever-shifting networks of such connections.
The society of 2084 has clearly figured out how to map this network, identify specific memories in individual brains (which is no mean feat), and insert new memories in the right ‘place’, where they make sense to the individual. After all, our memories are a key part of our identity, and how we perceive the world, so sticking new ones in without causing problems would require a degree of finesse.
So, the organisations of 2084 are able to detect and map the elaborate, branching memory system in the human brain, and manipulate it. But, presumably, this procedure, like every other one in history, isn’t 100% reliable, even if you are being as diligent as possible. And that’s a big ‘if’.
One would assume that such procedures were first developed for therapeutic use, treating traumas and PTSD etc. But Rekall is more of a ’cosmetic’ affair. And given how the whole plot revolves around ‘capitalists torturing and killing people in the name of profit’, it would be safe to assume that a business providing this high-street procedure wouldn’t be overly concerned with customer wellbeing.
So, it’s plausible that, when attempting to alter and manipulate someone’s existing memory system, you could (particularly if you weren’t prioritising customer safety) overlook a key cluster of memories, engrams, and damage them via your ministrations. If these memories are particularly ‘core’, this could be like untying the knot in the rope holding up the circus tent of your mind, and the whole thing collapses, leading to the afflicted individual being unable to process what’s what, and who they are.
An unexpected rupture in an important biological network, that disrupts someone’s perception of reality? A good name for such a thing would be a ‘schizoid embolism’.
Also, there’s the later scene, where the ‘bad guys’ try to convince Quaid he’s hallucinating by ‘entering his delusions’. Regardless of how legitimate this is or isn’t, the way they describe his state, constantly creating an original reality around him due to the injuries he suffered in the Rekall process, sounds a lot like Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.
Overall, while I wouldn’t recommend it as a reference text just yet, Total Recall is surprisingly neuroscientifically sound. Which is good, because it’s a classic.
Non-neuro science observations: Not everything is neuroscience, so here are some other scientific quibbles.
MUSCLE MASS: It’s basically stated that Schwarzenegger’s character, before getting his new identity, spent a great deal of time, or may have even been born, on Mars. Arnold Schwarzenegger is at his most physically impressive here, though. He’s like a wall of biceps. Which, given Mars’s low mass relative to Earth, does suggest they’ve also figured out how to deal with the way low/microgravity reduces muscle density.
HIGH-SPEED TERAFORMING: The film resolves when Quaid is blown out into the lethally thin atmosphere of Mars, but not before triggering the alien atmosphere machine, which provides the planet with a thick, breathable atmosphere like Earths, just in time to prevent Quaid suffocating.
That was quite the gamble, on his part. This is a 500,000 year old alien machine. Nobody can say how quickly it operates. Triggering it may have started a process meant to last thousands of years, which is perfectly reasonable for a terraforming project.BIG SUN: At the very end of the film, the new atmosphere lets everyone enjoy the outdoors on Mars, as the sun shines brightly in the sky. I don’t see how a thicker atmosphere would move the planet closer to the sun, though.
But then, I’m not an astrophysicist.
For more insight into how technology affects out brains, check out my latest book, Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What To Do About It
Dan, John and I have been podcasting about films together since the pandemic, for the SMERSH Patreon account. It’s definitely worth a listen, unless you’re a big fan of Steven Seagal. Or David Bellamy.