Music of the mind

I remember this incident as if it happened yesterday, as it was not customary, in my capacity as the CEO and chief scientific advisor of the company, to attend our field studies, but on this day it was scheduled for some senior executives to witness a live experiment of one of our researches. I took the high-speed train to downtown Manhattan that morning to supervise the experiment which was conducted by installing a closed-circuit television in several small living rooms; so we could watch the first batch of participating women. For watching television for an hour, each of them received 150 dollars, while their behaviors related to smartphone use and eye movements were recorded for later analysis by our team in Boston. Half of the participating women were asked to leave their phones in another room; so we could compare their behaviors with the other participants who kept their phones. I noticed something strange on the first participant in the group, as she showed clear signs of sadness without her smartphone, frowning, restless, to the point that she grabbed the sofa as if she was about to lose her temper. At first, I thought she was sitting in an unfamiliar environment, or perhaps had a panic attack, but her strange behavior continued for some time, then I wondered if she was using drugs, which we sometimes discovered in previous studies, but the team did not notice any strange behaviors before her participation this time. Author: Karl Marsi Number of pages: 414