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Scientists Discover Way To Reverse Memory Loss
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jan 30, 2008 07:18 PM
from the insert-probe-and-remember dept.
from the insert-probe-and-remember dept.
electricbern writes "Scientists have accidentally discovered how to reverse memory loss by stimulating a specific part of the hypothalamus. Good news for people with Alzheimer's and those who just forgot where they left the car keys."
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Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Relax. We can get that right back for you. Now all I have to do is make an incision right there... yeah, and could you hand me that car battery and those jumper cables?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wait... If I forget... (Score:3, Interesting)
-- how to dump
-- how to wipe
-- how to bathe
-- how to relax
-- how to drive
-- how to ride a bike
-- etc...
What is there to remember?
Maybe it's not mere repetition, but intensity of act of repetition (not (bad) counting sex, or hemorrhoids, and other unpleasant things...) that helps us remember?
But, is there any proof that Alzheimer's victims forgot how to have sex? Swear, etc? (Not talking about those with stroke-like side-effects such as total motor or vocal or sensory failure...)
Re:Wait... If I forget... (Score:5, Funny)
WTF!?! Sex... Hemorrhoids....... Unplesasent things... I don't want to know...
Parent
Sad but... (Score:3, Insightful)
My mother had a series of small strokes (watch your blood pressure folks, and that's the extent of my preaching,) that left her unable to form short term memories.
It has completely devastated the woman she was and left the shell that's left unable to live day to day because she can't keep a memory intact long enough to not repeat herself.
Its painful and its even worse
Bluescreening (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, one thing I've realized about being stupid is that it's hard to recognize your own stupidity. (Which you might guess.) A seizure can trigger an IQ drop of 80-90 points and it takes a good part of a week for it to drift back up to 160 or 170 or whatever it is. I sometimes think it's over and that I have all my wits back, but then three days later I have to rewrite all the shitty code I've been writing for the past few days. It's generally well formed, looks OK, and is easy to read, but it somehow lacks direction and it turns out to do nothing useful.
Short term memory is consolidated into long term memory through some pipeline that involves several days of processing. If it gets disrupted by an episode of brain trauma, the result is retrograde amnesia: memories formed during the previous few days are damaged and dim. Stuff learned then will usually have to be relearned. There is no hard edge to it; there are memories right up to the point of failure- but they get dimmer and dimmer up to the day of the seizure, which is just a fog of blurry memories. I can actually teach people things that just a few days later they'll have to teach back to me.
The most terrifying times are when short term memory doesn't work at all, when things go in one ear and out the other. That always produces mind-numbing terror that never stops; you're perpetually surprised by it. I can tolerate it once in a while, since it's brief and not permanent, but if I ever get diagnosed with Alzheimers or a degenerative dementia I'll make sure there's a gun in the house. My grandmother is like this now and she is always scared whenever I see her. She doesn't recognize any of us anymore. This was a really proud woman most of her life, a little snooty even, and now she doesn't even know where the toilet is in her house.
Occasionally a seizure can produce a fugue, where you wander around in a daze, totally incoherent. This happened to an epileptic friend of mine just last month- [nakedjen.com] she was walking around Salt Lake City in a fugue, underdressed in 7 degree weather at 3 AM when the cops found her. When this happens, it's not always obvious what's wrong. I usually just think I'm looking for something. What, I can't remember, but it doesn't occur to me to think about it. It's easy to get lost, and I've found myself in some pretty weird places. One time (back when I had a car) I got lost driving home from work in a fugue. I didn't hit anybody or run any lights, just like my code looks OK and compiles, but the longer it takes to do something, the more likely it is to get screwed up.
Parent
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I'll Drink to That (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, for those living the dream, maybe there's some herb that's good for that part of the brain.
I know I'd prefer that to going under the knife or taking a pill with some synthetic stuff no one ever tried before.
Been there, done that (Score:5, Funny)
Great (Score:2)
Dammit.. (Score:5, Funny)
Or just don't load Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Do Want (Score:3, Funny)
You see, I've had this Sheryl Crow song stuck in my head for a week now...
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As the doctors say... (Score:2)
Can we force these electrodes into the heads ... (Score:5, Funny)
If you are going to insert electrodes into politicians, why waste it on their head? There are better choices available.
Re:Can we force these electrodes into the heads .. (Score:2)
Accidentally discovered? (Score:4, Funny)
apply the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag please (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I also have PTSD, which is at least in part an overstimulation of the amygdala. And I've dealt with the unpleasant effects of psych meds which doctors hand out like candy without really seeming to understand their full effects.
When tinkering with the brain, unintended consequences can be severe, and nobody seems to really give a crap about those unintended consequences except for the person who has to deal with them.
Leave well enough alone is usually the best motto when it comes to the noggin, unless your life and disability is too intolerable so you're willing to take any chance.
Re: (Score:2)
Other than physical ailments resulting in regular/constant excruciating pain, I can't think of a worse condition to have than one that takes away even your most fundamental cognitive abilities and memories.
I would add the 'waitandsee' tag to this though. A wonderful development, but don't get hopes up too soon.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just one possible scen
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally agree with your point that treating the human brain can have many unintended consequences. IANABS (I am not a brain surgeon), but having studied back propagation neural networks as an undergrad taught me that the human brain is MUCH MUCH more complex than we would like it to be. The perceptron model (and variations on it) are an oversimplification of the workings on the brain. Even if you modeled all of the synapses in the brain, you still have to deal with the fact that the brain
head injuries (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking as someone with crap memory as a result of a head injury, I wouldn't risk it.
As someone also with crappy memory due to a head injury, I survived a Traumatic Brain Injury [headinjury.com] or TBI [wikipedia.org], I'd be willing to take part in a study to investigate whether something like this would help me.
fortunately most of the effects in my case were temporary, but I still have problems.
Unfortunately unless there's a breakthrough more than likely in my case it's permanent.
When tinkering with the brain, unintended consequences can be severe, and nobody seems to really give a crap about those unintended consequences except for the person who has to deal with them.
I look at it the oppose to you, because of people like you people like me are being prevented from seeing possible breakthroughs in neurology, oh and cancer treatment.
Leave well enough alone is usually the best motto when it comes to the noggin, unless your life and disability is too intolerable so you're willing to take any chance.
Not only is my life so intolerable I'd be willing to take a change, but I'd leap at such a chance. If I weren't so chickenshit I'd have ended my suffering years ago.
FalconParent
Re:apply the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag please (Score:5, Insightful)
The mind is the essence of who we are. People who have not gone through these experiences like to think that their personality, their very being is an innate feature of themselves, unchangeable.
It's not. Who you are is merely chemistry. Fuck around with that chemistry, and you become a different person. I've experienced that. Most doctors haven't.
People look at things simplistically, they focus on ONE aspect of the brain's function. Memory. Depression. Hand you a pill that they know raises the levels of mood-enhancing chemicals, and there's your depression cure. Anything that happens that's unrelated to your depression is simply labelled a "side-effect," and unless it seems to be immediately life-threatening, no further attention is paid to it.
But the person experiencing it can come to regret their choice. The immediate effects can be subtle, and the perception of the person can be altered so that they don't realize the change themselves, much the way stroke victims often don't realize the extent of their disability.
You can end up a wholly different person. And even if others around you don't make the connection, you may find some day years later that you've lost yourself as a person.
I don't expect most of you to understand that. But what I'm saying here is that when it comes to the brain, you may like the initial results, and that's all the docs will care about - your memory is better. For some people that will be fine. For others, they may find that with their newly refurbished memory comes severe depression, stress, or a change in personality that years down the road they find intolerable.
In my case, doctors tinkering with my brain caused personality changes that initially seemed exhilarating. It was only years later that I recognized that I was behaving like a sex-crazed manic depressive. The initial problems I had were minor and temporary compared with the results of their "cure."
Parent
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Seconded. Absolutely correct. (Score:2, Interesting)
Over the years, he's taken quite a selection of prescribed psychoactive drugs, in varying dosages. Interestingly, my observation is that the personality distortions my friend has shown have always been more closely tied to dosage factors than which drug he's been taking. I've seen him stark, raving mad - enraged - depressed - zombied - manic (uncontrollably so); and I've seen him quite normal. Seems that once they get his dosage down pat, howev
The soul is chemistry (Score:5, Interesting)
As computer nerds we are likely to think of the brain as a Turing computer. The hardware and environment don't matter, just the programming. So we assume that someone's personality is entirely determined by the capacity of their brain computer, their experiences, and conscious decisions.
But the brain's mental state is sensitive to the chemical environment influenced by the other organs and glands. Seeing how changes in kidney function changed my mental abilities, I think maybe the Egyptians were not so silly to consider the kidney and liver to be as important as the brain for carrying a person's soul.
The experience has also made me more tolerant of other personalities. I could be those people even with my own brain but a different set of organs. I wonder if there have been any studies of personality change after liver and kidney transplants. What would happen if we could someday perform a brain transplant. Should we consider the soul and identity to transfer with the brain or with the body, or is a new combination a new person?
Parent
Re:apply the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag please (Score:4, Interesting)
Back to the point. I've very cautious with what I attempt. I'd rather be who I am than try everything to be a "normal" someone else. I've found ways to get a lot out of having no memory, and I think I've gotten more out of life because of it. I'm not saying that no one would pursue these treatments, I'm just agreeing with the parent that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. And for such odd situations, it's hard to get enough of a sample of people who can tell you what it is like (since it can affect who you are, which affects you ability to declare what it was like.)
Parent
Michael Crichton's "terminal man" (Score:2)
Anyway, in the end, the shocks made the guy become murderous permanently, and he killed a bunch of people,
Re:Michael Crichton's "terminal man" (Score:4, Informative)
And the shocks didn't make him murderous - the shocks conditioned his brain to trigger a psychomotor epileptic seizure (to experience the pleasure of a shock) - eventually, the conditioning caused seizures which overrode the neural pacemaker's ability to moderate his brain's electrical activity.
Parent
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He takes an interesting idea based on some scientific premise, and takes it to a nice fictional story level. That is all.
Good news for (Score:4, Funny)
Also good news for those who done forgot them gramma'h rules from the schoolin' days.
Me lose brain? Uh-oh (Score:3, Insightful)
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while not wanting to bring the mood down, innit funny how much R&D goes into "curing" Western maladies like erectile dysfunction and pickled brain cells while millions die each year from neglected diseases
What's wrong with that? The third world diseases you linked to are an economic problem, and no R&D is required to solve them. That's why those diseases are virtually non-existent in wealthy nations.
You might argue that we need to shift resources in order to help those people, but you can't argue that the direction of R&D research needs to shift. That wouldn't help, they'd still need the funds to deploy whatever cure they come up with.
Re:Me lose brain? Uh-oh (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you misunderstood my argument. I didn't think you were anti-science. Your comment led me to believe you're a well-meaning guy who is concerned about the welfare of people who are less fortunate than you. I think you set your sights on the wrong problem though.
The reason so much R&D money is being spent in things like anti-aging and anti-obesity is because these are unsolved problems. The diseases listed in your wikipedia link are solved problems. If the economy in the third world countries catch up, they disappear. Dengue Fever, for example, is transmitted by mosquitoes. If you have the resources to invest in mosquito control, the problem disappears (such as the mosquito eradication program in the united states back in the 1960's, which is why we don't have a dengue problem here--the antiviral drug isn't necessary to end the disease). Most of those other diseases, such as parasites, also go away once people start living in more sanitary conditions. If you want examples of a disease that isn't as vain as "limp dicks" that gets plenty of R&D, just look at cancer. That problem can't be solved with by simply improving the economy, so there's a lot of R&D investment.
So the question is, why do those diseases still exist? Lack of resources. And if the R&D resources get shifted to solve those problems, the resources to pay for the newly found medicine will still be non-existent, and the "solution" won't get deployed. Case in point, AIDS medication. People with AIDS in the US can lead relatively normal lives with the available medication (ok, they still have their share of problems, but their life expectancy is significantly higher than it would be without the medication). In Africa, they can't afford it, because the patents make those medicines way too expensive to buy from the first-world pharmaceutical companies, and they can't produce it cheaply in those countries without paying the royalties to those same pharm companies. Your study, coming from the "Commission on Intellectual Property Rights" was a biased study designed to fight this particular criticism in favor of maximizing the amount of cash the pharmaceuticals get to squeeze out of their patents. The obvious flaw is that the same countries that DO respect patents, are those that can't afford the already existing drugs.
However, even those AIDS drugs aren't the solution to the problem. Again, that's another disease that mostly goes away with an improved economy and education. If you understand how AIDS is transmitted, you can completely avoid it (assuming the hospitals in your country check their donated blood and organs for diseases, as well as having the resources to keep their surgical instruments sterilized). That's why the united states has a significantly lower incidence of the disease even though people with it can live longer and therefore would be able to transmit it to more people over a longer period of time. Since the vast majority of people here understand how the disease is transmitted, and has access to condoms, the problem doesn't spread out of control.
Parent
Original research abstract (Score:5, Informative)
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/117902419/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 [wiley.com]
Clement Hamani, MD, PhD 1, Mary Pat McAndrews, PhD 2, Melanie Cohn, PhD 2, Michael Oh, MD 1, Dominik Zumsteg, MD 3, Colin M. Shapiro, MD, PhD, FRCPC 4, Richard A. Wennberg, MD, FRCPC 3, Andres M. Lozano, MD, PhD, FRCSC
Bilateral hypothalamic deep brain stimulation was performed to treat a patient with morbid obesity. We observed, quite unexpectedly, that stimulation evoked detailed autobiographical memories. Associative memory tasks conducted in a double-blinded on versus off manner demonstrated that stimulation increased recollection but not familiarity-based recognition, indicating a functional engagement of the hippocampus. Electroencephalographic source localization showed that hypothalamic deep brain stimulation drove activity in mesial temporal lobe structures. This shows that hypothalamic stimulation in this patient modulates limbic activity and improves certain memory functions. Ann Neurol 2008;63:119-123
Received: 5 July 2007; Revised: 31 August 2007; Accepted: 4 October 2007
Re: (Score:2)
FYI, here's the original abstract for the research the news article is based on:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/117902419/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 [wiley.com]
That link doesn't work. Simply remove the CRETRY part: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/117902419/ABSTRACT [wiley.com]
But you can't access the actual research without subscribing to the site (which costs $$). Maybe someone has access and will share?
Personally, I welcome our .... (Score:3, Funny)
other side of the discovery (Score:2)
Well, consequently it's first time anyone tried to plant electrodes in the brain to treat obesity either. Yeah, I guess, you can call that an "accident"!
"I went to a fat camp, and all i got was an electrode in my brain and this lousy T-shirt."
SWEET!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Even neater is the possibility of temporarily removing memories and then bringing them back later, something like spy work or undercover jobs. Give someone valuable information, wipe it... get them to negotiate with someone and agree to remember it after payment is sent. Then they give him a shot of the stuff... whooops, been screwed, he never know it at all! Dead spy... happy rich boss. Lotta potential here.
I'm going to Mars (Score:4, Funny)
Sincerely,
Douglas Quaid
P.S. Do you know where I can find Kuato?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Being unemployed and having the sex drive of a frozen burrito.
Re:Memory loss (Score:4, Funny)
But a frozen burrito is stiff, hard, and meaty. And look at the shape.
Parent
Re:Memory loss (Score:5, Funny)
I may be wrong about sex drive, but I think your post reveals some other side-effects.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)