Welcome to the not-old better show. I'm your host Paul Vogel-Zang.

As someone with autism spectrum disorder, John Elder Robeson knows what it's like to feel

emotionally removed from situations. John, author of the New York Times

best-selling memoir, Switched on, explains to me that there's this emotional language you're missing.

There are stories in people's eyes.

There are messages.

The idea that they were going to do it by using high-powered magnetic fields and I had worked as an engineer

with high-power electronics and high-power electromagnet so I thought boy I know all about what they're doing

which again was totally unfounded now I realize that as much as I

wanted all my life to see into other people what I was wanting was to be like

everyone else but you know to be like everyone else is not really a formula for success it's a formula for

blending into the herd and that's attractive at some level but I think being different

is what can make us stars.

John Robeson didn't fully understand what that meant

until he received trans cranial magnetic stimulation or TMS, which is a non-invasive procedure in which areas

of the brain are stimulated with electromagnetic fields to alter its circuitry. By introducing current to the brain, doctors can probe the function

of certain parts of the brain and we can even modify how different parts of the brain work.

We'll stimulate your brain with this and then we'll put you back in front and show you a bunch of different faces and we'll see how you do after.

And it seemed straightforward.

And since they believed it would only last 15 minutes, they thought, well, whether it makes you better or worse it's going to be

very short-lived effect you'll be at the hospital for an hour after we've done it

and by the time you leave any effects will be gone and it didn't work out that way

...