A Neuroscientist's Breakdown of Limitless
By Ignatius Vincent Trochlear
April 17, 2011So I went over to the movie theater to catch a matinee of Limitless, which opened last month as the no. 1 box office draw in the country. The plot is based on the concept of a drug existing that allows you to access 100% of your brain. Before I get into the movie, I should state right off that most neuroscientists believe we use 100% of our brain. The idea we only use part of it comes from 19th Century American psychologist William James's book The Energies of Men that "We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources." The figure of 10% comes from a count of brain cells in the cortex in the 60s that showed only 10% were neurons, although we know all the other cells in the brain are functioning now too alongside neurons. Since this is a piece of entertainment, let's not quibble over details and just assume that Bradley Cooper is going to play someone very very smart. Which is going to really test the acting chops of one Bradley Cooper. Anyway, I knew what I was getting into with this movie - as Roger Ebert says, '“Limitless” only uses 15, maybe 20 percent of its brain. Still, that’s more than a lot of movies do.' And more than me too most of the time. But I'm always ready for some suspension of disbelief when I get my Cherry Coke. It's to the point now that I can't enjoy a movie unless I have a Cherry Coke with me. I'm actually not even sure if they still sell Cherry Coke outside of movie theaters. Anyways, I had my Cherry Coke and go there in time for the previews. Thankfully too, because the spectral smoke in the Conan the Barbarian trailer had me pumped to be at the theater. Coming in August!! Following Conan was a trailer for Hanna, a movie that looks ridiculously interesting on several levels. A girl is brought up away from society to be a killing machine. The CIA is after her. That's a movie I can get behind. All of this was great foreplay for Limitless. I was ready now. I didn't even mind that Bradley Cooper was in the damn thing. All right - you want to stop reading now if you haven't seen it - The movie starts with a large horrible sounding metal banging like someone dropping a crowbar on a cement floor. And then we hear Bradley Cooper's voice as Eddie Morra say, 'How come when life begins to exceed your wildest dreams, you find a knife has stabbed you in the back.' All right, getting some clues into where this movie is going. Beyond our wildest dreams. Awesome. 'For a guy with a four digit IQ, I must have missed something,' he says. The only thing I'd have an impact on was sidewalk. All right, more harbingers here. Bradley wants to have an impact, and he has a four digit IQ. And he is susceptible to hyperbole. Good, this movie might go somehwere. Then we get the fancy brain going into neuron, going back into a brain CGI, in that powers of ten way until we are out in the streets of New York. I liked this better in the 90s Guinness Commercial - |
Anyway, we finally pan out to our hero - Eddie Morra, a disheveled misanthrope, in a bar yammering on about a book he's writing. How someone in the bar doesn't smack him, I don't know. And how in god's name he got a book contract, I don't know. As the movie moves forward, we realize that his girlfriend/fiance is leaving him and Eddie walks around doing more disheveled loser things until he runs into his brother-in-law from his previous marriage. This guy looks like if Josh Brolin and Christian Slater had a baby. He seems really interested to hang out with Eddie for a drink, and he's a drug dealer. Eddie nearly jumps into the bar because has nothing better to do. We find out that his ex-wife is a 'failure' because she had kids and moved upstate. Which seems pretty stable and successful compared to the montage of Bradley throwing up on his boss. How much worse can it get for this guy? Eddie's brother in law Vernon claims he's been consulting with pharmaceutical companies and is no longer a drug dealer. Okay. And that they are marketing something for 800 bucks that allows you to access more than 20% of your brain, in fact all of it. That it is in clinical trials and it activates receptors of specific circuits that are somehow dormant. This is an interesting concept neuroscientifically. Neural systems is the study of pathways that traverse to different parts of the brain. If there are specific circuits that are possibliy vestigial in the human brain that we can't access, and a drug existed that could somehow tap into that, it would be powerful. But as of now, it is not believed that such circuits exist. Vern slides a single clear pill towards Eddie and says it's called, NZT-48. Let me be the first one to patent one of these for a blackout drink. We already know about Bradley's proclivity to alcohol and drugs and laying around hungover and not writing his book, so we figure the guy is definitely going to take this pill. He deliberates over whether to take it about as long as a me over whether or not to get a Cherry Coke at the concessions. And here we go. As he's getting accosted by some girl in the hallway who is extremely upset at him for some reason (probably a good reason) we see some psychedelic brain imaging that is not possible biomedically, but it still looks cool, and then there is an annoying high pitched tone. Does the drug give him tincture? And suddenly he's spouting out BS - Check out the big brain on Brad!! |
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So here we get to see what Eddie is going to do with his new found active circuitry in his brain. He claims he's able to access all the things that he's forgotten. His brain is like google. Anything that happened in his life is at his fingertips. However, I feel like Eddie was mainly getting hammered and might not have much in there to begin with. The drug does however give him an uncanny ability to BS. Although he comes off like a pompous douchebag. And his glossy eyes make you think he's joined some cult. Yet he writes this girl's law school paper, she doesn't tell him to screw off and instead screws him. I am guessing this is because he looks like Bradley Cooper and less to do with anything he said. One of the skeptical things here is that he would not have encountered all the things in his life in order to write a successful law school paper for her. But if he speed read some wikipedia entries, maybe it would work. Or maybe if the pill could put all the information on the internet into your brain. And you could get pill updates each year to add what has been added over time. But you would also get all the porn sites too. Back in his apartment, the drug makes him want to do the dishes. And somehow there are more of him - kind of like that old Michael Keaton movie multiplicity. But again, the movie is not lost yet. He also doesn't smoke cigarettes for some reason - is there nicotine in NZT-48? He says, 'I knew what I needed to do and how to do it.' We didn't see the part where he pondered the metaphysical properties of work and question 'why do anything?' But thank god, he's finally writing his damn book. Letters are falling from the sky and everything. The next day, big brain Eddie goes back to crappy Eddie. He drops off his book and his publisher treats him like crap. But he's used to it. Eddie says, 'I sent a little probe down my brain but no brilliance came up to greet me.' No, it didn't. The next thing he does is go straight to Vern's lavish apartment with some weird gold statue of a naked woman's torso right inside the door. He needs more drug, and it's clear this drug has extremely addictive qualities. We're starting to lock down what the drug might be. Vern promptly sends Eddie to the dry cleaner's for him now that he has him eating out of the palm of his NZT-48 hand. Eddie has a horrible self-image. He wants NZT-48 because it lets you 'be what you want to be.' According to the DSM-IV, he might be a candidate for Dependent Personality Disorder. Ironically, there's no good medication for this disorder. When Eddie gets back to Vern's apartment, he finds him dead. Cooper then launches into some acting that is probably best not to mention. You ever see a dancing monkey? But then he finds a huge stash of NZT-48 in the oven. Eddie isn't useless after all - he found something guys willing to kill for couldn't. Who would have thought the oven? Not the killers. They clearly didn't have any NZT-48 to help them focus. And now here's where the fun starts - Eddie has a ton of the drug and he can go hogwild- what is he going to do? Cure cancer? Find a solution to world hunger? World peace? What's going to happen? First he decides to finish his book. Fair enough, he's been working on that thing for like 10 years. And we get some more infinite regress in the form of endless mirror images as he hammers on the keyboard and churns this thing out in four days. Although I'm not sure this is an indicator of intelligence either after seeing Stephen King get his ass beat on Jeopardy- |
Now the book is done, and Eddie needs to blow off some steam. Also fair enough. If you write a book in four days you're allowed to have a drink or two. So we get to watch some scenes where Eddie wiggles his way into high class parties. NZT-48 has made him ridiculously confident. And extremely lucky. He's playing poker and getting every card - suddenly all these women want to have sex with him even though he is pompously spouting out BS and practicing medicine without a license. He's cliff diving. William James would be excited in term of his "energies of men" theories, but as far as intelligence, I think it's safe to say the drug helps with self-image, increases risk-taking, possibly by repressing signaling in the amygdala. And is highly addictive. More ideas on what this drug might be.
And then Eddie says, 'I had an idea.' Now we'll get to the good stuff. Is he going to find some secret to the inner workings of government that would maintain peace only to get all the criminal agencies and governmental agencies hot on his tail so they can maintain the status quo and their grip on power? Is he going to find a cure for cancer only to discover that the drug is a carcinogen itself in a fateful twist of irony before we wonder if he'll be able to discover a way to cure himself. What is he going to do?
He's going to make some money.
Apparently just for the sake of making money. And my thoughts meander to a single questions - why couldn't someone else be taking this drug?
So Eddie does some boneheaded things while doped up on NZT. He gets involved with a Russian gangster for some cash, uses the cash at a job at some investment firm he acquired through a friend. I'm not really sure how he got the job. He makes a shitload of money. Then goes on the bender of all benders while some guy at the investment company stakes his whole career on Eddie after knowing him for about an hour and a half. He sets up a meeting with Eddie and Van Loon - one of the richest guys in the world, a guy played by a disheveled and disinterested Robert DeNiro, who looks nearly worse than pre-NZT-48 Eddie.
DeNiro says, 'I was happy you weren't one of those half-terrified half-cocky guys we are used to seeing' which is funny because Bradley almost always seems half-cocky and half-terrified.
After he crashes from his bender, he can't remember anything. In other words, he has severe anterograde amnesia, meaning he can't remember anything from the event onwards. This occurs with alcohol but not to the level as with NZT and seems to deal with the effects on structures in the limbic system like the hippocampus and the cingulate cortex. So the drug is apparently shutting this down quicker when acting with alcohol. He can still access everything stored in long term memory (like all that italian he learned and kung fu he knows) but not the short term. All the while a cross between Robert Duvall/David Caradine chases him around.
We also learn the drug is so highly addictive that if you quit cold turkey, the withdrawal symptoms and nausea will kill you. His girlfriend also takes him back, and I think they have sex on NZT. But they don't go into details on that one, so unfortunately there are no clues as to what the drug is to be gained from that. "I can take care of us now.' he says to reassure her. Really Eddie? Really?
Due to a sobering up by some trouble with the law, Eddie decides he should stay away from alcohol and get some security guards. He tells them not to wear the same color suits because 'this isn't he matrix.' No it is not.
Now he's all in to try and get some money for Robert DeNiro to make a merger with this guy Atwood, who had a similar meteoric rise as Eddie. Here is where we suspect this guy is also taking NZT - and it does turn out that the Robert Duvall/David Caradine guy is actually working for him to get it back. But thankfully, Eddie has a hidden pocket in his jacket where he keeps all of his NZT. This of course gets stolen. However, instead of trying to cure cancer, Eddie has a lab where he's trying to make more NZT.
Meanwhile DeNiro's character has two great quotes - tells Eddie he isn't good 'at assessing his competition because he's never really competed.' and that the 'classic smart person move is to think that no one is smarter than them.' Although I think we established that intelligence isn't what Eddie acquired by taking NZT. And DeNiro's second in charge also has a great quote, calling Eddie 'an unqualified little prick.' Finally someone besides me that doesn't like this pompous guy with the glossy, 'I just joined a cult' look on his face.
Now we get to the best part of the movie. The Russian guy is back. The metal crashing during the opening credits was him trying to get into Eddie's bunker apartment.
The Russian is all hopped up on NZT and he wants more.
And here is when the best scene of the movie happens. Eddie impales the Russian and as
the pool of his blood rolls toward his face, he needs some way to think out of the situation so the henchmen don't kill him. And he starts drinking the Russian's blood. Awesome.
Of course, here's where I have to throw a wet blanket on this and say that the he was only getting about 1/80th the normal dose of NZT. And this is a conservative estimate. Some of this drug was already being processed by the Russian's liver and other cells in the body after he injected it into his blood stream. Lets assume he injected the equivalent of just one pill. The human body has about 190 fluid ounces of blood. Assuming all of the drug was still circulating in the blood, and judging that Brad lapped up about 2 fluid ounces, we'd say it was cut 1/80th in the blood, even if none was absorbed in tissues. So it seems the NZT could have been effective at much much smaller doses and he could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by cutting the doses. Because he seemed exactly like he had a full dose after sucking up a couple ounces of the Russian's blood.
Cut to Eddie in the future after he gets out of the scrape. His book is for sale and he's running for office - more evidence this drug does not contribute to intelligence. His book has a weird L. Ron Hubbard title called 'Illuminating Dark Fields'. Maybe he's trying to start a cult himself. And he has a Greg Kinnear haircut and a Scott Bakula attitude. Both things which make him fit right in in politics.
DeNiro confronts him to try to get him to do his bidding when he's elected. But Eddie puts DeNiro down- 'If I worked for you, you'd end up as my bitch.' and 'think I didn't learn anything, think my synapses didn't change.' True, neuroscience believes that as we learn we experience synaptic change and more dendritic spines due to a process called 'plasticity' - meaning the brain is not locked in one state in perpetuity, but is able to change. And then he goes on to predict the future in terms of an accident that happens in front of him.
So his luck continues. Or he's able to predict the future. Which might make for a more interesting movie.
So it seems that the drug is highly addictive, creates a better self-image for the person taking it, allows them to focus and access parts of the brain they normally couldn't, and increases risk-taking behavior. And maybe helps them predict the future. And likely has no effect on creativity or imagination. As we see with Eddie, it would be interesting to give this drug to someone like Stephen Hawking and see what happens instead of Eddie. Although because of it's side effects, and the fact that it causes damage to some areas of the limbic system, I would say that it is acting on the Dopamine neuropathways. So it seems to me to be a form of adderall at it's best and cocaine at it's worst in highly concentrated form as evidenced by his ability to get 'high' after ingesting only 1/80th of the dose.
Anyway, from a neuroscience perspective, it's worth a watch, although next time I might breakdown a classic like Momento or Pi or even A Scanner Darkly. And all apologies to Stephen King, because we know Jeopardy is not an accurate measurement of intelligence either - but being able to write the Lawnmower Man is. And I really want to see Hanna now, so that came out of this. And Cherry Coke.
Well, it's time to go, I need a beer.