Foreman brings House a case.
This alone is enough to catch House's (begrudging) attention, since usually it's Cameron coming to him with sob stories and puppy-dog eyes. Not that Foreman bothers with either.
The case was brought to him by a colleague he knows through various neurology conferences over the years. Her patient is late twenties, male, lives an unremarkable life as a computer tech. Symptoms: debilitating migraines, audio-visual hallucinations, short-term memory loss, and what seem to be intense night terrors. All of which the patient denies or insists aren't cause for concern.
"TBI or neurodegenerative disease. Boring."
"That's what I thought too," Foreman says, "until I saw these."
fMRIs. EEGs. There's a handful of them, and they're like nothing House has ever seen before. Brain activity in places that brains aren't usually active. House cracks a joke about mutants and Professor X, but Foreman can tell: he's got him. He's interested now. He wants to see the patient, run some scans of his own.
"That's the thing. He's not here, he's in California."
"Well, Cuddy vetoed my request to purchase Cerebro for the department, so..."
"He insists there's nothing wrong with him. We wouldn't even have these scans if his sister hadn't guilted him into letting her get some imaging."
"Hallucinations, memory loss, night terrors, and he's not worried at all. Sounds like a liar. My favourite." House squints at the patient info attached to the scans. "Fine. Tell Cuddy we're taking a field trip to see one Charles Bartowski."