In 1977, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake sat in a Cornell office arguing over what to put on the Voyager Golden Record, and among the greetings in 55 languages, the whale song, and the Bach they included the sound of a young woman’s brainwaves recorded while she thought about being in love.
On the afternoon of 3 June 1977, a young woman lay on a table at Bellevue Hospital in…