Few fail to be fascinated by the human brain. We all have them, yet most of us know very little about them. By and large we take completely for granted that they will function correctly, keeping our everyday lives ticking over nicely. But what if something went wrong? What if one day you woke up to find that everything you thought you knew about the way you function, interact with others and live your life was thrown into the balance? It is this that Curious Directive attempt to grapple with in Return to the Silence.

Entering into a dark space, apparently random clips of video playing on two screens at either end of the space, actors whispering incoherent mumblings into microphones on raised platforms, and ushered onto a moving seating pod, you already feel slightly disoriented before the performance begins, which is presumably deliberate, since the journey you are to experience will shake your perceptions of the world around you. The piece centres around the story of Jill Bolte Taylor, an American neuroanatomist who experienced a severe haemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain, and the patients she worked with over her career.

The play serves as a whistle-stop tour through various brain-related disorders and abnormalities, following a number of Taylor’s patients: a man with Parkinson’s unable to look after himself or even tie his tie; another suffering from Pica, a strange condition in which the sufferer feels compelled to eat materials not intended for human consumption – metal, paint, chalk etc;  a couple struggling with the fact that one of them has a severe REM sleep behaviour disorder, meaning that whilst by day he is loving and kind to his partner of seven years, by night he turns abuser, beating and strangling him so that they have resorted to erecting a wooden barricade down the middle of the bed; and finally a man with the Capgras delusion, a condition which causes the sufferer to believe that a friend or loved one has been replaced by an identical imposter.

It is difficult not to get caught up in stories such as these. As soon as you actually begin to think about how complex and incredible the human brain truly is, the whole thing is totally mind-blowing, if you’ll pardon the pun. But the wonderful thing is that though the tiniest malfunction can lead to serious consequences when it comes to brains, they are also – as was pointed out in the play – incredibly adaptive. So the man suffering from Parkinson’s was able to relieve his symptoms (and finally tie that tie) by listening to classical music to loosen up his muscles – a truly incredible feat of the human brain. The most recent episode of the fascinating new Channel 4 series The Brian: A Secret History also celebrates the incredible ability of our brains not only to continue to function when severely damaged, but actually to re-learn what has been lost. So those who have experienced debilitating strokes, once written off as beyond help, can now actually recover and go on to lead relatively normal lives, and patients with severe epilepsy can have the damaged part of their brain removed to restore normality.

But whilst the study of brains is gathering momentum, with the many scare stories of reckless past experimentation behind us, it still remains an incredibly complex area of research – hence why other branches of science appear to be progressing more quickly. But more fundamentally, however much we know, or will come to know, about this most strange and miraculous of organs, will we ever truly be able to understand it? And so we enter the realm of philosophy. How can I begin to understand how the world looks to someone whose neurological function is so different from my own? How would we know we were not speaking at cross-purposes or misinterpreting each other? However much I might know about the function of another person’s brain, will I ever understand what it is to feel emotions as another, to see the world through another’s eyes. And even if we were able to unravel all of the inner workings of the brain, could it ever give us the complete picture? In other words, are we completely determined by our biology, or are there certain things that we will simply never know?

It is these sorts of questions that go some way to explaining why the human brain is so fascinating to us; it remains to such a large extent a mystery. I have never broken my leg, but I can imagine, since I’ve felt great pain in other parts of my body, what it might feel like. But to imagine waking up one day and not knowing what numbers, or letters are; or how to move my legs; or how to write my name. That’s a hell of a lot more difficult. And so the brain continues to fascinate human beings and drive more research into its secrets, and Curious Directive certainly captured this fascination with their thought-provoking and informative piece of theatre.

Till 29 January 2011