Three-month-old Jenny lies in the crook of her mother’s arm.
As the infant twitches in her sleep, nine thin wires taped to her face and bald head wiggle in all directions, giving her a baby Medusa look. Jenny’s mother opens her sleepy eyes in the dimly lit room and stares blankly into the tiny face only inches away. The matching wires on the mother’s head nod toward her baby as she unconsciously reaches out and pats Jenny reassuringly a few times. She adjusts the baby’s blanket, and they both drift back into a deeper level of sleep.
One room away James McKenna watches the needles on a 12-channel polygraph jump in tandem as Jenny and her mother experience this mutual arousal. An elfin grin spreads across his face. He’s recorded so many of these unconscious stirrings that they now seem to him to map out a nightlong dance.
McKenna, an ...
