Minds & Media: Severance in Real Life
Kessler Foundation researchers examine real life science in pop culture
By Jacob Serfaty, Data Analyst in Center for Traumatic Brain Injury Research
Severance recently passed Ted Lasso as Apple TV’s most watched show, capturing the hearts—and minds—of its growing fanbase. The show offers a haunting perspective on memory formation and how memories are stored in the brain. Those who undergo the Severance procedure are implanted with a chip that creates a worker “innie” separated from their everyday “outie.” The result is essentially two beings living in and sharing one body.
Lumon, the fictional biotech company/cult behind the Severance procedure, is hypothetically implanting its chips somewhere near the hippocampus—the brain’s memory formation hub. The hippocampus works with the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and other regions to form, consolidate, and retrieve memories. When these brain regions are synchronized, memory formation runs smoothly, letting us piece together what happened in the past and plan for the future. The Severance procedure, like certain brain injuries or neurological conditions, disrupts that synchronization. The result is a form of compartmentalization where one set of memories becomes inaccessible from another, just like an innie unable to access their outie’s life.
In real life, the brain rarely divides memories cleanly. Because memory formation involves widespread circuits across the hippocampus, cortex, and other areas, damage to any part of the system can impair recall. Concussions and other traumatic brain injuries often affect both attention and memory, making it harder to focus in the moment and retrieve important information later. Strokes can wipe out entire pockets of memory depending on where in the brain they strike. Misfiring neurons in the hippocampus or nearby temporal lobe regions—common in epilepsy—can disrupt the memory formation process, leading to temporary amnesia or fragmented recall.
Glenn Wylie, Kessler Foundation’s leading neuroimaging expert, knows how fragile this system is: “The brain is a delicate instrument, and when its processes are disrupted or its anatomy surgically altered, you risk changing not just your neural chemistry but who you are as a person.”
Memory isn't just a mental filing system—it’s the foundation of human identity. Losing access to certain memories, whether through injury, illness, or a fictional brain implant, doesn’t just create blanks in recall, but alters the way people understand themselves and their relationships. When the brain’s delicate balance is thrown off, the self becomes fractured, leaving behind questions of who we really are without the stories we tell ourselves. Whether by accident or design, memory disruptions remind us of something Severance makes painfully clear: if we can't remember who we've been, how can we know who we are?
