Memories Can Now be Created and Erased in Lab
Does that mean Eternal Sunshine-style memory wiping coming to a doctor’s office near you? Let's find out..
By Sadho Ram — 15 Sep 2013, 01:23 PM — Updated about 11 years ago
Neurobiologists at UC Irvine have succeeded in creating new memories in the brains of rats
The same process should allow scientists to create memories in human brains, too. They say that this is the first evidence that memories can be created by directly altered neurons in the cerebral cortex.
extremetech.com
It may sound like science fiction, the results, which were published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, are very real
The team, led by Courtney Miller from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in Florida, successfully erased drug-associated memories in mice and rats, providing hope for recovering addicts or people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
They note that former methamphetamine addicts have reported drug cravings triggered by memory associations. Money, cigarettes and even gum can pull them back to the addiction they tried so hard to leave behind.
cnet.com.au
This is how they did it
To create the memory, the researchers played a series of test tones to the rodent test subjects. When a specific tone played, the researchers stimulated the nucleus basalis, releasing acetylcholine (ACh).
extremetech.com
This jolt of ACh then causes the cerebral cortex to turn that specific tone into a memory. Later, when the rodents are played the same tone, their respiration spiked, showing they recognized the tone.
time.com
The other tones, which weren’t subjected to a spike in ACh, did not cause the same reaction.
extremetech.com
In the film 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', Jim Carrey's and Kate Winslet's characters have their painful relationship memories erased
In the film 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', Jim Carrey's and Kate Winslet's characters have their painful relationship memories erased.
Image via extremetech.comThere are far-reaching exciting and ethical repercussions from this discovery. On the one hand, with some kind of brain stimulation implant, it might be possible to cure or alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.
extremetech.com
On the other, this means we now have the knowhow to implant memories into the brains of humans and other mammals — and by association, it probably isn’t too hard to delete specific memories as well.
extremetech.com
The concepts introduced by such books/movies as Matrix, Total Recall, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind now seem scarily close to reality.
time.com
The good news is that we’re still a long way away from such therapeutic or destructive use-cases. It will require years of medical testing before you can walk into a clinic and ask to have a memories created or ablated — at least legally, anyway.
extremetech.com
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