Scientists Have Discovered How To 'Delete' Unwanted Memories (telegraph.co.uk) 158
A new documentary from PBS reveals how cutting edge science enables us to 'edit' memories and create new ones from scratch. "For much of human history, memory has been seen as a tape recorder that faithfully registers information and replays it intact," say the film's makers. "But now, researchers are discovering that memory is far more malleable, always being written and rewritten, not just by us but by others. We are discovering the precise mechanisms that can explain and even control our memories."
Paging Dr. Tyrell (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, and his niece Rachel.
Re:Paging Dr. Tyrell (Score:4, Funny)
Bzzzzzzt---wrong film. And therefore not even remotely funny.
You should be paging Dr Edgemar [imdb.com].
Re:Paging Dr. Tyrell (Score:4, Insightful)
Those quacks?!!! When I have memories that need removal, I page Dr. Mierzwiak [imdb.com]!
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and I for one, page dr .... oh, what was his name?
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If you want to watch the documentary, here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's kind of interesting. It's not one of my favorites but there's the link for those who want to see it. If you've got an hour to burn and want to learn about it, have at it. I like NOVA and this one is fine, still not one of my favorites.
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Does it actually say we are now actually able to erase and rewrite memories, or that we are only *learnng* how memory really works, . because if they said they can now rewrite memories I don't recall it being mentioned in the show (pun not intended). Of course we have known how to excise memory for a long time even hundreds of years.. if somewhat crudely, via treppanning (!), or more recently via frontal lobotomy (All sing together now "I'd rather have a bottle.....").
So the only new development would be
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I only watched it once but it doesn't really say that they can be rewritten as far as I recollect. They can implant, they can delete, and they can sort of see the physiology of a memory being formed, accessed, and things like that. It's not bad, as far as documentaries go, but it's certainly not as detailed as I'd like. All I watch is documentaries - at least for the most part.
But, we can erase them. It's a bit neat. They're able to invoke the memory (through standard means) and they they drug you. The drug
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Maybe his memory is not what it used to be.
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Bzzzzzzt---wrong film. And therefore not even remotely funny.
You should be paging Dr Edgemar [imdb.com].
Except no? "Paging Dr. Tyrell" is spot on, unless of course you don't understand the reference.
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Implanting memories in an android != implanting memories in a human.
Re: Paging Dr. Tyrell (Score:1)
Replicants are not androids but synthetic humans. Flesh and blood, that's why they were "more human than human".
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In one of these films, memory implantation is mentioned tangentially. In the other, it's central to the plot.
Can you tell which is which?
We Can Remember it for You Wholesale (Score:2)
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I would've thought this fella would be more appropriate.
https://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&btnG=Search&q=Howard+Eternal+Sunshine [google.com.au]
Of course this should be possible (Score:2, Interesting)
My understanding is that when a person remembers something, the record of that memory is destroyed and then rewritten in the brain. However, there is at least one drug that can prevent the creation of memories in the brain. It's always seemed logical that, under the influence of such a drug, accessing a memory should also cause that memory to effectively be erased.
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I keep trying that, but it only seems to work on keeping new memories from being stored, and has nothing to do with erasing old ones.
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Uh, no... did you watch the whole show? Has to do with old memories. The act of remembering a memory re-stores the memory. If you interrupt the re-storing process, the memory...dies.
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I would think the memory is erased via overwriting.. therefore accessing a memory woulfdn't cause it's erqasure. Were it not so we would be vegetables from birth. Lots of common anxiolytics can prevent the formation of new memories, leading one to suspect that GABA is integral towards the formation of memory. since it is also GABA (Gamma Amino Butyric Acid) that is displaced by these drugs to (presumably) exert their calming action ...
Of course this is what I learned 35 years ago so maybe they know a whole
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Or the new movie with not Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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APK: Now you can spell 'FAIL' with just 3 letters.
Mitigation (Score:3)
Time to invest in Ray-Ban.
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You mean luxottica?
Ray Ban has been nothing but a brand name for quite a few years now. In fact, Luxottica owns damn near all sunglasses brands.
Before We Go All "This is Great!"... (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Does it require the subject's cooperation to erase the memories? 2: Can they be retrieved by some means later, if necessary?
If the answer to these questions is "No." Consider the following scenarios:
1. An accused criminal gets the key witnesses in the case wiped before the trial.
2. Cops "forcefully interrogate" a suspect, and when the suspect turns out to be innocent, wipe the victim's memories of their treatment.
And those are just Abuse 101.
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As far as I can tell, the entire thing is just theory of what they want to do, not that they have the ability or understanding of how to do it.
The article has about as much science as the Discovery channel.
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"The article has about as much science as the Discovery channel"
Indeed
Enhance, delete, incept: Manipulating hippocampus-dependent memories : "whether science is able to one day “catch up” to science fiction remains to be seen"
From: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... [sciencedirect.com]
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A total memory wipe and replacement is basically the same as killing you. Yes your body is still alive but what makes you "you" is your memories, your life.
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A total memory wipe and replacement is basically the same as killing you. Yes your body is still alive but what makes you "you" is your memories, your life.
Interesting contention, but I don't know that I agree. Certainly part of our identity is skills, habits, aptitudes, and preferences, all of which are at least in part decoupled from conscious memory. In fact, it might be possible that memory plays a pretty small part of the whole ensemble that is 'self'.
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A politician or CEO has his own memory of crooked deals, wiped.
Rape victims or pedophile victims get their memories of their abuse and torture, wiped.
Leaving aside the amount of technology required, there will be a large black market for this. It may create an industry of deleting every unpleasant memory, leaving only the memories of adulation, success and narcissism. Will that have long-term consequences? Memories were deleted in the movie Frozen (2013) without consequence. In ST: TOS, Kirk claims the
Re:Before We Go All "This is Great!"... (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, I'm wondering if there's any actual science here. A Torygraph news article referencing a PBS documentary doesn't exactly scream "science" to me. We're basically hearing it from a tertiary source.
So does anyone have a link to the actual research and the primary source behind this?
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As far as creating memories False Memory has been studied heavily in the 1970's, and was noted as far back as Freud (and possibly earlier).
The famous court case Ramona v. Isabella eventually vindicated Gary Romona, who's daughter, Holly Romona, still believes was raped due to an implanted memories involving therapist Marche Isabella, Dr. Richard Rose, chief of psychiatry at Western Medical Center in Anaheim, and the Anaheim hospital. Basically the therapists / medical staff were so zealous to get to the tr
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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It's not like computer storage where you can read the same data over and over without fear of tampering with the original content.
I give you SDRAM, wherein the read operation does indeed damage the stored data, so that the memory controller has to immediately rewrite any row it reads (not to mention the constant general refreshes).
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1. An accused criminal gets the key witnesses in the case wiped before the trial.
More easy and likely for the cops to plant false memories. In fact I'd say trivially easy, and combined with the unwarranted faith people have in human memory as some kind of infallible recording device, very effective I'd say at getting the desired result.
If you've been following the science of this topic, the idea that memories an somehow be destroyed is not particularly surprising; the only problem I have with is the term "wiped", which implies that memories are faithful recordings to begin with. Memory
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Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Please test it on goatse
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Nope, his memory is still intact, unlike his...
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It's like Alzheimers: you don't have to buy a new magazine because you can just read the same one over every day.
Faithfully? (Score:5, Informative)
"For much of human history, memory has been seen as a tape recorder that faithfully registers information and replays it intact,"
Um, no. It has been well known that memory is unreliable.
Re:Faithfully? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod this up. Any lawyer will have had this in their first class on witnesses. Memories are known to be very unreliable.
Years ago, I taught myself hypnosis, based on reading a book about it. One thing that struck me in that book was the statement that on a subconscious level, our brain cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. It is only our consciousness (the linear reasoning part) that filters the fantasy bits and supplies appropriate metadata. As any beginner hyptnotist will learn, consciousness is off much more often than we realize.
From my own experiments, erasing someones memory of something while they are under is one of the best working mechanisms that become available to the hypnotist. When I told folks to forget my name and planted a different name in its place, the information persisted even past the session. I had to show my ID to convince the person that their memory of my name has been manipulated.
The ethical implications of this mechanism are obvious. In fact, I haven't been able to proceed in my "studies" of the phenomenon precisely because I wasn't able to deal with using the mechanism without the subject's knowledge.
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Yeah, just deprive yourself of sleep for about 3 days and you will start to explore this fine line between fantasy and reality. I have actually experienced waking dreams in this state, where I am interacting with both my own imaginings as well as people in the real world at the same time.
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When I'm nearly asleep, I have vivid recollections of past dreams to the point where I truly believe some things have happened in the past. Not only that, but often dreams build themselves on past dreams like a continuous universe.
As soon as I'm awake I realize that it's all fake, and soon after that I forget all about it unless I really focus on it. It's fascinating, but I don't have much of a clue on how to explore it.
Re: Faithfully? (Score:2)
Worse. There really is no fundamental difference between hypnosis and being 'awake'. Chew on that!
Re:Faithfully? (Score:4, Funny)
It has been well known that memory is unreliable.
Unless you're misremembering that.
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Yes, but juries haven't been told that.
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Paywalled (Score:2, Informative)
Got a message demanding that I either pay their subscription or allow them to load adds on my machine. Ironic considering the subject of the article... Even more disheartening is that pbs's own site flat out displays a white page with an add blocker enabled.
In any case here is a functioning link http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/neuro-hackers-create-delete-memories-160213.htm
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Your computer already has adds. It even has multiple types. Your computer is perfectly happy doing both integer and floating point adds, as well you likely have a graphics subsystem that is VERY good at doing a lot of adds at the same time!
Let me guess.... (Score:5, Funny)
Does the method involve alcohol?
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Any decent brand of scotch will do that! -- Montgomery Scott
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I thought alcohol got rid of the memories that you wanted to keep and kept the ones that you wish you would go away.
i know.. (Score:1)
Some additional info (Score:1)
I have a few things I'd like to remember (Score:1)
...memory has been seen as a tape recorder that faithfully registers information and replays it intact,...
My own experience would suggest otherwise.
And there's plenty of evidence that most people – e.g., crime scene witnesses – do not remember things faithfully.
Never the less, there are a few things I'd like to forget.
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by tape recording they mean vhs left in the car on a sunny day...
I'm more interested in implanting information in bulk not the same as convincing someone they committed a crime. Seriously, why would you convince someone they committed a crime? This would be exceedingly dangerous.
Full documentary link (Score:1)
Those that RTFA may be put off from being given only a preview to the PBS documentary. Here's a link [pbs.org] to NOVA's website where one can watch the entire episode.
Nice! (Score:3)
Create new memories?
I need a couple of years Harvard Medical and Law to go, thanks.
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Hrmmm, does that mean we should implant law knowledge or a series of drunken sexual harassment encounters?
Can it be used to treat PTSD? (Score:3)
Welcome to Paradox (Score:2)
Welcome to Paradox had an excellent episode about removing memories: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt07... [imdb.com]
Personally, I don't think it's a good thing because so much of who we are is founded in our memories: good and bad. For many people with a dissociative disorder has this happen anyway. eg: Now, how did I get here.
Old News (Score:1)
Sign me up! (Score:2)
Very cool, just like in Vanilla Sky and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Dont mess with Texas (Score:1)
Tazer use for "questioning" (Score:2)
There's a Hillary Clinton joke in here somewhere.. (Score:2)
...what I said in the subject line.
Memory safety ??? (Score:2)
It's possible that, as a side effect, memories may be removed that are valuable. Suppose you've 'forgotten' many things ... exactly how can you verify that without trying to access all of them? How would you go about systematically checking them?
I've never heard of any test or method that can detect lost information ... let alone the quantity, clarity, intensity involved. Clearly some parts of our educations fade naturally, possibly due to limited or no accesses. But we have experience and specific details
We need better science reporting... (Score:1)
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Hi, Alex! Still sounding real good to you in the old echo chamber, I see.
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Thanks for a new slashdot effect target! It's been a while since we've had a chance to sharpen our claws.
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Don't do it, all you're doing is increasing his visitors counter at the bottom. I bet he'll use that to show his boss/client that the website is successful.
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Can't show the boss shit when your website is down and remains down.
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Total Visitor 004902
Slashdot affect not what it used to be ...
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Or that server runs from a home connection while linked to the cloud. Live businesses are rather prone to this, cloud or not. If the primary server can't take the live load, it's over.
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For giggles, I checked again - 50 more clicks in the past 24 hours. Ah, well, the new owners seem better than DHI, at least.