試想一下，在這個無窮無盡的工作正在侵蝕個人空間的時代，如果有一種技術能將職業身份與個人身份的記憶完全分開，你不再需要為如何平衡工作與生活而感到煩惱，會發生什麼？這究竟是件好事還是壞事？
如果你看過第二季剛剛完結的科幻美劇《人生切割術》
（Severance）
，肯定不會對這種設定感到陌生。
在劇中的世界，一家名為盧蒙（Lumon Industries）
的超級大公司要求某些員工接受一項名為“Severance”（下文以劇集名稱“人生切割術”代指）的人格分離技術，這項技術可以將一個人在公司的人格和日常人格分開。按照公司發言人的說法，僅需在大腦中植入一枚微晶片，你就再也不用把工作帶回家了。
在走進通向工位樓層的電梯後，員工的日常人格就會陷入沉睡，身體由公司人格主導。而在下班離開時，日常人格則會重新接管身體，兩個人格都不會記得另一個人格在公司或生活中經歷的任何事。
劇中，主角團馬克·斯科特
（Mark）、迪倫（Dylan）和埃爾文（Irving）三人都接受了分離手術，並在同一個部門工作。直到某天，他們所在的部門迎來了一位名叫赫莉（Helly）的新同事，她身上的反叛氣質打破了長久縈繞在這個部門以及整個公司的平靜。同時，馬克前同事離職後在現實世界中的出現，分離樓層主管哈蒙妮·科貝爾（Harmony Cobel）
的失控……這些意外都再度掀起了公司員工對“人生切割術”的質疑。
為提高內容真實性，《人生切割術》的主創團隊請來現實世界裡的神經外科醫生擔任劇集的科學顧問：來自美國蒙特菲奧裡·愛因斯坦醫療中心（Montefiore Einstein Medical Center）的顱底、微創神經外科和腦腫瘤中心主任維賈伊·阿加瓦爾（Vijay Agarwal）
。他將為我們揭露“人生切割術”的幕後科學故事。
劇透警告：即使文中會盡量避免劇透重要情節，但建議你至少看完第二季的第七集後再食用本文。
《人生切割術》的導演之一本·斯蒂勒（Ben Stiller）
對故事的可信性、真實性要求十分嚴格，即便有腦洞加持，他也希望儘量使故事背後的科學原理是真實的，唯有如此，才能讓觀眾真正喜歡這部劇，並沉浸其中。
一開始，製作團隊正在為一部尚未成型的劇集尋找一個概念，當時的想法是讓劇中的人們接受一項技術：在腦中植入一個晶片，把你的工作生活和社交、日常生活分開。但涉及到具體問題時，製作組就難以獨立解決了，比如分離程式是怎麼開發出來的，以及應該如何把人“遣散”（劇集原名Severance直譯為“遣散費”）？
為此，劇集團隊聯絡了維賈伊，他們圍坐在一張大會議桌前，在桌旁的白板上塗畫。最終找到了一些真正可信的、觀眾會喜歡的，並且符合導演願景的設定。
在《人生切割術》中，維賈伊對其中的事實性細節做了一些調整，加入了一些現有的，以及即將成為現實的科學概念與醫療程式，並請人運來神經科學家在實際工作中會使用的一些導航裝置作為道具，讓它看起來足夠真實。
為了讓手術過程更逼真，第一季第二集裡為劇中角色赫莉·R（Helly R）植入晶片這一幕，維賈伊甚至親自上陣，在鏡頭前實施了由他親自設計的手術。在我們最終看到的場景中，從在頭骨上打洞，到用特製的針頭將晶片植入大腦，都是神經科學領域目前常用的技術。
設想一下，如果我們穿越回幾年前，告訴活在那個時代的人們，神經科學家會透過在大腦中植入電極、刺激大腦來治療癱瘓的人，讓他們能夠再次行走；還能治療一些人的強迫症、藥物成癮、嚴重的自毀傾向、帕金森氏症、抑鬱症或肥胖症等疾病，他們一定會覺得你瘋了。從表面上看，這似乎是一個非常“科幻”的概念，但如今，它已經不再稀奇，全球各地的頂尖學術型醫療中心幾乎每天都在進行這種手術。
The Neurosurgeon Who Advised Severance Breaks Down Its Science
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Today we’re talking about the science of Severance.
What if instead of struggling to find work-life balance, you could completely separate your professional identity from your personal one? That question kicks off the Apple TV+ show Severance, which just wrapped up its second season.
In the world of the show, a company called Lumon Industries requires certain employees to undergo its “severance” procedure, which its spokespeople say means you’ll never have to take work home with you again. It also means you have to get a microchip implanted into your brain.
To help make the procedure and its effects as realistic as possible, the folks behind Severance brought on a real-life neurosurgeon to consult on the show. Vijay Agarwal is chief of the [Division] Skull-Base [and Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery] [and Director of Brain] Tumor Center at Montefiore Einstein [Medical Center]. We sat down with him to get the inside scoop on the science of severance.
Before we get into that chat, just a brief spoiler warning: we did our best to avoid any super-specific spoilers for recent episodes, but we’d recommend waiting until you’ve watched at least episode seven of season two before listening.
Agarwal: Than we live in now. And it was just as simple as that. It was just a thought at that stage—you know, “We wanna develop a procedure that implants a chip that separates your work life from your social life, from your everyday life.” And we were off to the races.
Feltman: Yeah. What were your initial thoughts and reactions when you first heard that premise?
Agarwal: I thought it was a very cool concept, and I think I just directly went into how that could be a reality. You know, one of the things that Ben Stiller was really strict on was that he wanted this to be as believable as possible …
Feltman: Mm.
Agarwal: As real as possible. There are some sort of creative allowances that happen as part of this process, but he really wanted the science to be real and to be believable, and I think that’s part of the reason that people have really bonded with the show and in particular the science.
Feltman: Yeah, well, that’s a great segue to my next question, which is: What are some of the, the real science concepts and, you know, factual medical procedures that you’ve baked into the concept of the severance procedure?
Agarwal: I made a statement a while ago that I don’t think we’re far off from things like this happening, and I really firmly believe that. And we’re actually much closer than when I made that statement.
Feltman: Mm.
Agarwal: So if we had told somebody a few years ago that we would be implanting electrodes in the brain to stimulate the brain to treat people who are paralyzed and allow them to be able to walk again or treat their obsessive-compulsive disorder, their addiction, their severe suicidal depression, obesity, things like that, we would think people are crazy, but those things are actually happening currently in science. And almost every major academic center around the world is doing these sorts of procedures every day, in particular to help people with diseases like Parkinson’s disease. And so it seems like a very science fiction-type concept, but it’s part of our everyday life as neurosurgeons and neuroscientists.
Feltman: Well, and can you walk me through, you know, in creating the concept for the severance procedure, where did you sort of pepper in factual details, you know, for example, the placement of the chip?
Agarwal: I actually think that that scene is very, very realistic.
Feltman: Mm.
Agarwal: And so we—I borrowed from the science and the surgeries that we do today, even. So some of the navigation equipment that we use, I had that equipment shipped in. And so when I started, it really was just a concept: “How do we develop the severance procedure? How do we ‘sever’ people?” Then we sort of developed the science, and I remember very—in the early days of the show sitting at a, you know, a big conference table with Ben and Dan [Erickson] and a lot of the producers, and we just had a whiteboard in it, and we would just spitball concepts …
Feltman: Mm.
Agarwal: Until we found one that was, you know, really believable and the one that people liked and the one that Ben thought would fit with his vision.
And so we really implant in an area that is able to process memories but, interestingly, associates those memories with emotion. It’s the amygdala and hippocampus, so those sort of middle part of the structures, on the left side of the brain, which is the dominant side of the brain for most people. So what a great area to stimulate to really facilitate this ability to separate our “innies” from our “outies”: number one, the ability to process memories, but then, number two, the ability to, to associate those memories with emotion. So that was a perfect place to do it. And then, actually, the procedure was very realistic. So how we put the hole in the skull, the needle with which we use to implant the chip, those are things that we use every day in neurosurgery and neuroscience currently.
Feltman: And you actually appear on camera to do the procedure, is that right?
Agarwal: Season one, episode two—so when we implant the chip in Helly. So we really designed that set. So, you know, Ben had a very specific vision in mind, and then our goal was really to try to make that vision become a reality. And so everything was important on that set, from the scientific accuracy to the lighting to the cinematography. And so it was all specifically laid out to capture a purpose. And so that’s the episode that I appeared in and very proud with the, the way it came out.
Feltman: Yeah. So just to really spell out the actual neuroscience here, which I think is so cool, in your mind—pardon the pun—what is that chip doing in there, in that part of the brain?
Agarwal: As I mentioned before there are se—multiple companies trying to do something on a different scale, which is trying to stimulate the brain to alter the way that it functions: so Elon Musk’s Neuralink; a lot of my friends are working on this technology at different centers around the country; Synchron is another company based out of New York that’s trying to do something similar in terms of being able to modify the function of the brain by inputting electrical stimulation.
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