Adventure seed: Borogove Syndrome.

Borogove Syndrome

First successfully described in 1942 by a team using the Padgett memetic pseudonymic technique to avoid neurological infection, Borogove Syndrome is one of the most interesting and dramatic forms of a purely neuro-linguistic symbiotic organism.  There is some dispute as to whether Borogrove Syndrome is a symbiote and not a parasite, but hosts to it are in general agreement that the condition is benign, if not actively beneficial.

…We think.  Asking questions can be difficult.  More accurately, understanding the answers to those questions can be difficult.

Basically, Borogove Syndrome is a very rare childhood disease – hosts are typically no older than seven or eight, and often younger – that reprograms its host’s ability to process ‘regular’ logic and geometry.  The host retains enough of the basics to move around and even communicate with baseline humans; but he will not be able to think in it.  This would be crippling for the host, except that the logic and geometry that he can think in allows for all sorts of interesting abilities; primarily, the ability to shift from this plane of existence to one more suitable for his new neurology.

This would be a horrific tragedy, except that the host can shift back – and the Other Place that they go to is not particularly inimical to mankind. It does, however, lack certain amenities that this plane of existence can provide (read: snack foods), which allows for a certain amount of trade.  Intellectual properties from the Other Place are useless, of course: attempting to understand them can result in a secondary neurological infection that rather unpleasantly resembles a mild stroke.  But the physical composition of artifacts can be themselves analyzed, and doing so has advanced materials science on this plane fairly significantly, if quietly.
Research, as they say, continues. Carefully. Very carefully; the researchers still know very little about the Other Place, and what they do know is probably wrong.