Aside from headaches, Murphy experienced drowsiness, slower reactions, and a craving for sweets over the next few days.
He felt as if The Lion King was playing in his head constantly, not just the dialogues; he believed he could draw the entire movie from start to finish with a pen.
"In short, these are consequences of increased neural connections," Omid Abbott explained.
"Merely recalling a movie I watched in the past increases so many neural connections?" Murphy was skeptical, "Then shouldn't your heads explode from reading papers every day?"
Murphy didn't mention The Lion King, only briefly described his experiences.
Omid pondered and said, "I can explain this from two perspectives."
"Firstly, the information obtained from your Total Recall might be much greater than several papers."
"How so?"
"Our brains are incredibly smart. We encounter an unimaginable amount of information daily, like visual information. Our eyes' resolution is extremely high, with hundreds of millions of pixels, and our ability to recognize motion is nearly thirty frames per second. In terms of bytes, just visual information sends over 15GB per second to our brains."
"That's over six hundred petabytes a day."
"With such a massive amount of information, our brains don't process it all. Instead, they select parts that need special attention for computation, ignoring most information. By associating useful information with known information, we form memories. The part ultimately remembered is much less."
"Because of this memory method, most memories are indexes and associations of past memories. Even some images and scenes are simplified into elements and features, so in terms of text, they might not be as much as a paper of tens of thousands of words."
"But according to you, Total Recall allows you to recall nearly all details of a scene, so its information volume might be quite large."
"Secondly, you might misunderstand how the brain works."
"In fact, our brains are always working. What ordinary people consider 'playtime' is still a continuous learning and training process for the brain, no different from studying a paper."
"The reason our brains don't grow larger while constantly learning is that we're also forgetting. Numerous synaptic connections are formed and decay every moment."
"This keeps our brains constantly updated, focusing energy on current problems."
"Our understanding is that during your self-administered Legilimency, many 'dormant synapses' were awakened, and numerous new neural connections formed, equivalent to the information increase an ordinary person might experience over four to five days or even a week."
"Such a rapid increase in information load without a forgetting mechanism naturally requires time for your brain to adjust."
Murphy understood but asked, "Any ideas for improvement? I mean, without needing a Pensieve as an external device."
Truthfully, the feeling of having complete insight into his memories was appealing, almost as if he could replay every second of his life from childhood.
Setting aside the potential treasures unearthed, the significance of gaining further control over his body and thoughts made him reluctant to abandon the spell.
"Perhaps enhancing brain capacity could help alleviate these symptoms," Omid suggested, "but our brains are already the most efficient and powerful computing tools in nature. I can hardly imagine how to enhance it further."
Murphy thought for a moment, then had an idea, "Actually, the wizarding world does have ways to enhance intelligence."
He took Omid to the Potion Laboratory on the eighth floor.
Compared to the crowded Spell Research Room and the Magical Creature Laboratory occupied by various creatures and transformation research groups, this place was much quieter.
Currently, only three research groups, totaling about twenty people, worked here.
Their main tasks were to analyze Beautification Potions and Amortentia to find Muggle alternatives for producing these potions—or at least alternatives for some steps.
Compared to Beautification Potions, the analysis of Amortentia progressed slower.
On one hand, Amortentia's production was indeed more complex.
On the other hand... Murphy had heard numerous reports of complicated relationships among the group members...
Reportedly, the nine-person Amortentia research group, consisting of five men and four women, developed over a dozen couples, including male-male, female-female, male-female-male, female-male-female, and other combinations that defied traditional norms.
Laura reported that these chaotic relationships delayed Amortentia research and suggested regular rotation of group members, but Murphy refused.
Rotating them would turn the entire institute into a dating experiment.
"I asked you to research, not to practice 'the most ancient and powerful magic.'"
Moreover, Murphy felt the researchers couldn't be blamed.
This could even be considered a work injury.
Working in an environment filled with Amortentia without turning every day into a party and still focusing on research showed significant professional ethics.
Besides Beautification Potions and Amortentia, other potion research was based on researchers' personal interests, including studies on Skele-Gro, Energizing Potions, and magical materials like Mooncalf dung, Murtlap essence, and dragon blood.
Such research, being niche and distant from Murphy's goal of "enhancing wizard capabilities," wasn't prioritized, usually involving only one researcher per topic.
Compared to the larger, collaborative research groups, these researchers were relatively isolated, dubbing themselves "lone wolf researchers."
Murphy was looking for one such lone wolf researcher.
"Pex Morey," Murphy found the tall Slavic man with gold-rimmed glasses, "His research topic is..."
"Smart Potion," Pex volunteered, "I believe it can make a person's mind more agile."
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