Scientists Erase Specific Memories In Mice 320
Ostracus writes "It sounds like science fiction, but scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely. After exposing mice to emotionally powerful stimuli, such as a mild shock to their paws, the scientists then observed how well or poorly the animals subsequently recalled the particular trauma as their brain's expression of CaMKII was manipulated up and down. When the brain was made to overproduce CaMKII at the exact moment the mouse was prodded to retrieve the traumatic memory, the memory wasn't just blocked, it appeared to be fully erased."
Lots of potential uses (Score:5, Interesting)
Screw that. I want to erase desirable memories from people's brains. Think how easy it would be to make office workers stay later when they can't remember any of the good stuff that happens when they leave the office?
Or for shits and giggles, how about removing all traces of memories of sex for the unwed father of a child? Would make the paternity suit industry tons of coin, I bet.
But enough of the super-villain type stuff.
How abvout erasing the memory of the first time you had warm apple pie? Then, you get to try it for the first time every night.
Re:so now when us paranoids rant wbout your memori (Score:5, Interesting)
ah but that's the thing, i lost about 6 months all told of memory.
the doctor wasn't really up on his paranoid schizophrenia, and he said that the memories were probably repressed. no, no they weren't they were gone completely.
the last time it happened i only lost 3 days, i was on a different medicine then though, and there are some files of what i said and did that are very weird. my explanation for what happened was hackers broke into my computer and used the wifi connection to directly control my thoughts. i don't bring that up to my doctor of course. wifi is everywhere, and hacked computers are a dime a dozen. which lead to my going all hard wired internet with hardened firewalls that are half-open and have specific configurations settings for each pc and each os that connects to the hardened firewalls, and oh i don't run my computers at night.
but the doctor just thinks i am a computer hypochondriac, in addition to being paranoid schizophrenic.
not applicable to humans (Score:5, Interesting)
What with humans being rather complex, mentally, Information may not be stored only once, or it could be fragmented.
The only way to selectively destroy memory would be to track down all instances of it, which I would say is pretty unlikely in the human brain. Same goes for most other primates.
Amnesiacs typically have a non uniform memory loss. Some things they can recall, but not others. Two people with identical brain damage can easily experience different levels of amnesia. Producing a reliable general method for memory deletion is almost certainly impossible.
Short term memory disruption, and the prevention of moving short term memories into long term memory is easier to achieve.
If you want to experience it, dislocate your elbow and go to hospital. They'll give you a nice pill, you'll scream while they manhandle your arm back into position, and five minutes later you won't remember any of it. I've not experienced it, but I've relocated a fair few arms. Its funny when the people wake up and ask when your going to start.
Re:Lots of potential uses (Score:4, Interesting)
"Or for shits and giggles, how about removing all traces of memories of sex for the unwed father of a child? Would make the paternity suit industry tons of coin, I bet."
the 1990's called, we use DNA to figure out who isn't cleaning up their dog poophttp://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/17/160246&from=rss [slashdot.org], paternity suits likewise are solved with DNA tests.
perhaps if you time traveled back to the 1950's in a time machine with 3 other scientists and crash landed in new mexico, you would find a use for the drug in paternity suits. but how to market something that scientifically can't be proven to work? since the science that makes it possible makes it obsolete (for paternity tests at least)?
or perhaps after the 1970's that failed time travel experiment from the 1950's would result in a government using the super secret modern tech needed to make such a drug possible that they retrieved from a 'weather balloon' and would widely use it to control the nation and wind up with a huge massive government that has to tax everyone and is still ten trillion dollars in debt, because mass producing all that memory wiping drug is expensive so more an more memories need to be wiped, and perhaps people become resistant to the drug after being flooded with it all their lives...
Re:erase undesirable memories (Score:3, Interesting)
While this might positively applicaple
I tell you where else this would be a positive thing - in erasing the memory of good books/films/video games, so that you can experience them all again as if for the first time. I would love to be able to re-experience the magic of reading some of my favorite fiction as if for the first time.
Re:Everlasting Sunlight of the Spot-Free Brain (Score:3, Interesting)
There has already been research done (I think in the US) on ways to prevent short term memory formation as a means to reduce trauma for soldiers. I.e. If the drug is taken before an attack, they wont feel guilty or traumatised by the things they do.
Re:erase undesirable memories (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to be able to re-experience the magic of reading some of my favorite fiction as if for the first time.
I'd much rather experience the magic of something genuinely new.
Psychological issues caused by trauma (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be interesting, to one day see if removal of a traumatic memory can help with psychological issues that may stem from it.
For example, can erasing war-time memories lessen PTSD, and to what extent? Or would said person simply exhibit the same symptoms and have no idea why?
Re:Psychological issues caused by trauma (Score:5, Interesting)
Such technique already exists, and is used for heavy trauma, like plane crash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_Movement_Desensitization_and_Reprocessing [wikipedia.org]
The trick is pretty simple, just move your eyes from left to right, then right to left, continuously.
It seems to relieve the traumatic pains, and is widely known. For example, Carlos Castaneda describes this trick in his books.
No idea why it works, though !
Re:Goatse (Score:1, Interesting)
You have just given me a great idea!
1. Open clinic for erasing memories.
2. Create bot that spams links to Goatse.
3. Profit!
Re:erase undesirable memories (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm all for science, and I understand it's not like there's a neuralizer available on the market yet... but this sort of research, while important for understanding how the brain works, has a high potential for misuse, if if ever gets more practical. Who would you trust to keep it in the "good" side ? Governments? Law enforcement? Private companies ? The people ? ....
Ok so rape victims... or any other crime done to you that you might want to forget about.
Let's say you're a rape victim. You might want to forget it. But should you really ? Wouldn't you want to know that it happened ? There are moral implications here...
Let's say you want to forget it and don't mind about not knowing about it anymore. What happens if someone in your surroundings, that knows that it happened, accidentally or intentionally lets it out ? Maybe you'll hate yourself for taking that decision earlier. Will we also have to erase the memories of everyone that knows, so that this sort of revelation never happens ?
Couldn't perpetrators use it as a twisted defence ? "My victim doesn't remember anymore, so it's like it never happened." After all, the main witness has been "erased". So there were traces of sperm/blood/whatever as evidence ? Well, since it's been erased, who's to tell it wasn't consensual ? Maybe the victim was trying to frame the alleged perpetrator before having his/her memories erased, making it quite difficult for the victim to confess the framing afterwards, since he/she has no recollection of it.
What if the perpetrator has his/her memories erased ? Spend time in jail for no reason... so law enforcement could put you in prison for a crime that never happened, but they say it was erased from your memory. How would you know if it's true or not ?
Let's say this method becomes "relatively" accessible (like on the black market). Let's say you're a raper. Rape someone, make him/her forget. How will you be caught ? There's no witness. This is already sort of happening with the "rape drug".
Hmm I just wrote a bunch of arguments there, have fun destroying them. ;P
Ahhh, science... always two-sided. But believe me, I'm all for science.
Re:Everlasting Sunlight of the Spot-Free Brain (Score:5, Interesting)
That is the most amazing and terrible idea I have ever heard. How wonderful would it be to help soldiers not feel guilty about doing their duty and yet so utterly terrifying. Part of what makes war a "last resort" option is the horror that it causes. If we removed the pain of war, perhaps it would become far to easy to wage it.
While I do not wish PTSD upon any person, and wish that no person should ever fight in a war ever again, I cannot condone taking the sting out of war. Contraptions like remote bombing drones, cruise missiles and robotic fighters remove one side from the killing and take away the reality and the horror of war. War is terrible, awful, hellish and traumatic. The trauma and horror are what make us abhor it. Every time we remove one of those elements, we make it easier for us to wage war. It also makes it easier for us to kill them, whomever they may be.
Anything that makes it easier for us to kill them takes away a little bit of our humanity. Robotic killing machines, remorseless soldiers and supid ideas like Rods From God [popsci.com] all take the killer too far away from their victim. It's significantly easier to maim and kill when it's a glob of pixels on the screen. Seeing and knowing the person you are killing makes it much more difficult. War should remain messy and terrible; it's the mess and the horror of it that makes us think twice about waging it.
Been done on humans by the military (Score:4, Interesting)
Mind control and induced memory loss was part of a (now famous) CIA project apparently involving dozens of universities, called Project MK-ULTRA [wikipedia.org]. See also William Sargant [wikipedia.org] and Donald Cameron [wikipedia.org].
shifty eyes (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps that's why we are conditioned to view people with shifty eyes with mistrust. Perhaps they are self medicating their psyche after being involved with (or having done) things that they'd rather forget and humans evolved a way to detect this.
Re:so now when us paranoids rant wbout your memori (Score:2, Interesting)
well you're lucky you caught me on an all nighter. usually my paranoid thoughts aren't on topic, so i go anonymous with them. and when i don't take my meds to stay up all night the paranoia flows easier and i'm more likely to post with this account. this morning i happened to be on topic and on an all nighter.
my blog explains why i was up all night. debugging kubuntu which is my primary net use OS.
windows is only for a games, and only when i don't have money to rent console games and have a decent console system.
although i'm +5 funny i seriously at times believe what i've posted and worse, it really depends how much weird shit has happened. you know, like the stock market plunging 5% but only on days i'm mad, and in a place where i've set up the computers on their security, while my home systems are turned off...
or like me making a mistake on my food stamps, despite the fact i keep every single receipt. i mean who expects their food stamps to suddenly arrive on the 27th of the previous month? when they normally go on the 14th? that's a big enough gap for a human to make the mistake, and think they have too much money. and waste their money on say coke products.
this actually happened to me, and the day i realized it had happened to me the stock market fell 500 points. i mean i know stuff about computers, a lot, but i don't do anything with that knowledge. working on computers gets really hard for me, especially debugging, but the ideas, some days they flow a mile a minute of what the capabilities of computers are.
if the world was just a model and there were lots of people like myself and you could say get them to post their ideas in a blog posted on the internet, and spot a gem from a mile a way... i mean administration would prevent you from reading memory just like on unix you cant' read someone else's memory... but what about dreams? would the system prevent you from dreaming someone elses dream? would the system stop you from posting information through a computer to a blog? would the system reward you with golden ideas and punish you with bad ones? these are questions i worry about when i'm not reading up on tech, news, politics(as long as it's not ads) the environment, or playing video games etc...
just so you know, i don't dream either. not usually i mean my mind does stuff when i sleep, but whatever it does, for all i know some famous writer or painter is getting the read and store dream my mind is working on.... because i've always had a problem writing stories and being creative on my own. but i still try once in a while, but i crave variety. i get bored thinking of the same things, except for a crack like addictions to real time strategy. i don't like to brag, but i'm level 25 on battle.net and know ever unit and every race, and i'm starting to know which units are really imbalanced and which are super weak... i still suck at figuring out what the other team is doing, but i'm pretty spot on on detecting bsers and i'm fairly good at telling when my team are rush/tech alternators with no communication skills (thus reducing the chances of winning my over 50%) btw i was a rush tech alternator for like 6 months before i learned real skill, but real skill gets weaker when you take a break from it, and i took a less stressful approach to gaming on battle.net the playing the odds, game, trying to figure out the odds of winning and which loser strat or which winning strat to play. if you do it right, the matching code makes your wins easier to predict, and thus less stress is there in games where careful strategy is required. close games drive a lot of gamers, i know it, but i have to calm down after a tight game where i had to adapt my units to theirs all game.
no karma bonus because this is really tangential.
Re:Everlasting Sunlight of the Spot-Free Brain (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand your point, but programmers generally don't include the period within the quotes unless they intend it to be a part of the string.
I'll agree that this doesn't agree with the practice recommended by English teachers, and that when writing for such a teacher one should remember that the period goes before the terminal quote, even when the quoted fragment doesn't include a sentence termination. But this rule is logically inconsistent, and therefore should be replaced. The time I experience dissonance is when I am terminating both a quote and a sentence, e.g.: He said "That's not what I said.".
Note the '.".' construction. That seems excessively awkward, but is the only consistent was that I can determine to punctuate it.
Remember, the rules of grammar were largely written based upon Latin. They don't actually fit English all that well. Sometimes they need to be updated. For programmers, a quoted selection is a string, and everything within the quotes is a part of the string. (There seems to be no generally accepted rule as to how to escape quotes within a string, but \" would generally be recognized. Some double the quotes, but that rapidly becomes unintelligible whenever even a slight amount of internal quoting exists.