Horror on the Brain: The Neuroscience Behind Science Fiction

Curiosity drives humanity to wade through the unknown, often leading to unforeseeable consequences. Scientists throughout centuries have mined these depths looking for – and finding – answers to life’s most mysterious questions, but perhaps the most memorable accounts of hidden dimensions have been left to us by science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin. When science discovers, science fiction writers ask “what’s next?” Horror on the Brain reveals the real science and psychology behind science fiction’s most iconic characters, from Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein to the doctors of H.P. Lovecraft and even today’s horror blockbusters like Stranger Things and The Last of Us.

In this fascinating exploration of fear and madness, neuroscientist Dr. Austin Lim recounts psychology’s most bizarre and haunting real-life cases alongside famous speculative fiction that stretched that science to the edge. In 1924, Hans Berger invented the EEG, a commonly used brain imaging device, as a means to telepathically communicate with his sister, eerily similar to the protagonist in H.P. Lovecraft’s Beyond the Wall of Sleep, while Nobel Prize-winning research on marine animals in the 1960s reflects the concepts of his At the Mountains of Madness. Phineas Gage, the 19th century man who experienced a dramatic personality shift following a traumatic brain injury, liked his experience to that of Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Investigate the neurological causes of schizophrenia and how characters in Sheridan Le Fanu’s story In a Glass Darkly manifest the diagnosis.

Neurological conditions from sleepwalking to the Cotard delusion – which leads patients to believe they are dead, even going to such extremes as burying themselves alive – have provided the basis for horror stories since their discovery, and, likewise, the wildly imaginative minds of writers have even prompted scientific research. Horror on the Brain uses illuminating analogies to connect science fact and science fiction, showing how spooky stories contain insights into the dark corners of the human mind and why we can’t stop looking into the abyss.

AUSTIN LIM is a neuroscientist and lecturing professor at DePaul University. His students are undergraduates and graduates in the departments of neuroscience, biology, and psychology. He developed and offers a course called “The Brain through Science Fiction,” which is an exploration into how science fiction authors such as Mary Shelley, Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, and William Gibson have used the popular scientific advances of their time to inspire their creative works.

His work has appeared in Scientific American, U.S. News and World Report, the Illinois Science Council Blog Science Unsealed, and Northwestern University’s Helix Magazine. He is the author of the open-source introductory level neuroscience textbook Open Neuroscience Initiative for the general audience interested in learning the principles of neuroscience in a formal, yet easily accessible manner. Since its completion in mid-2021, the textbook has been adopted by faculty from more than 30 universities or colleges around the world.