The scans that arrived at Stanford
According to Garry Nolan's account in Stanford magazine, two visitors brought him brain scans from pilots, intelligence personnel and others with various symptoms. Proximity to unidentified objects was suggested in some cases, but the scans alone do not establish what caused the findings.
Nolan said one visitor identified himself as a former CIA employee and the other as an aerospace executive. The referral raised a specific medical question: did the people share a pattern, and what could be learned from it?
Why approach a scientist who studies cells and cancer?
Nolan is a professor in Stanford’s pathology department with a doctorate in genetics. His work includes immunology, inflammation and cancer biology. His official profile lists more than 350 research articles and 50 US patents.
His laboratory develops ways to measure many markers within cells and tissues. Investigating such a case requires connecting a biological finding with the person's medical history. A possible explanation for the finding requires a separate test.
The account returns to the screen
In his January 2026 conversation with Mayim Bialik, also listed in the Sol Foundation archive, Nolan returns to unexplained medical cases and the possibility of injury from energy weapons. The discussion also explores possible connections between unusual encounters, perception and consciousness. In May he appeared on CBS during renewed coverage of Pentagon files.
These are two different entry points: an extended discussion of his research and worldview, and a more focused news interview. In both, the useful distinction is between what he personally examined, what others told him and what he thinks might explain it. Both videos are embedded below.
Sources: Mayim Bialik: original episode page, January 27, 2026 · Sol Foundation: January 2026 media archive entry · CBS News: Nolan on the brain and Pentagon files, May 22, 2026
The original interviews
Garry Nolan on CBS News
Published May 22, 2026, alongside renewed coverage of Pentagon files. Nolan discusses his work on reported neurological effects of unusual encounters.
The longer conversation with Mayim Bialik
Published January 27, 2026, and also listed in the Sol Foundation’s archive. The conversation extends beyond medical cases to perception, personal experiences and materials research.
What does white matter actually tell us?
White matter recurs in descriptions of these cases. It includes many nerve fibres and their myelin insulation, helping different parts of the brain communicate. A finding there can be medically significant, but an image alone does not identify who or what caused it.
Cleveland Clinic explains that white matter disease can involve impaired blood supply and familiar risk factors. A bright area in a scan therefore should not automatically become dead tissue, an immune attack or a signature of UAP exposure. Determining the cause requires medical history, the type of examination and comparison with earlier findings.
Havana syndrome is not another name for a UFO encounter
Havana syndrome, also described in US government terminology as anomalous health incidents, concerns medical reports investigated in their own right. NIH studies published in March 2024 found no consistent pattern of injury detectable by MRI relative to comparison groups.
The researchers stressed that symptoms were real and that the result did not exclude an earlier event without a lasting trace detectable by their methods. These were not necessarily Nolan’s patients, and the studies were not studies of UFO witnesses. Linking the two accounts remains a research question.
Sources: NIH: anomalous health incident studies, March 18, 2024
Injury and perception are different questions
The Stanford profile also discusses Nolan’s interest in the caudate and putamen. Here the question changes: from what may have been damaged to possible relationships between brain structure, perception and intuition.
A finding observed after an event was not necessarily caused by it. It could have existed beforehand, or be unrelated. Baseline data and comparison groups would help distinguish those possibilities. There is no established brain test that determines whether someone encountered another intelligence.
Turning a medical account into research others can extend
A useful next step would be a systematic comparison: when symptoms began, what was measured near the event, who interpreted the examinations and whether another team reaches the same result without first knowing the encounter story. This is a proposed test, not a description of a completed experiment.
For witnesses, having someone take their medical records seriously matters. For research, the question is whether a pattern remains stable when the word UFO is removed from the file.
Nolan also appears on the side seeking contact
Nolan is named among the authors of Skywatcher’s April 2025 framework. That documents a connection to a project exploring ways of eliciting or detecting responses from aerial phenomena. It does not itself establish participation in a military operation.
Stanford magazine's First Contact, linked in the sources, returns to Nolan's account of the referral and examinations. It is the starting point for checking what reached his laboratory and what he inferred from it.
Sources: Skywatcher: April 2025 original framework, archived copy
The companion feature
Skywatcher promised openness. Coulthart says its work became classified Skywatcher and White Sands