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Paycheck-Style Memory Erasure: How Close Are We?
Quirk writes "Scientific American takes a look at the movie Paycheck, based on Philip K. Dick's work of the same name. In the movie ...'a crack reverse engineer helps companies steal and improve upon the technology of their rivals, then has his memory of the time he spent working for them erased.' '...the main character gets several months' worth of his memories erased by having individual neurons zapped. Is that possible?'"
JM: The dominant evidence that goes back over 50 years is that one can block or certainly reduce memories formed within the past several hours by treating human or animal subjects with electro-convulsive shock. But it's nonselective; whatever happened in that past several hours will be gone. And that's rather gross stimulation applied to the skull. What Larry Squire at UC San Diego has shown is that if human subjects are repeatedly given electro-convulsive shocks (several times a week for several weeks), they will have impaired global memory that goes back many months, but that memory will gradually recover. He did this in the late 1980s.
Notice how these types keep saying that this stuff is good for you ....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
So, you have proof that MS has been involved in "technology theft" then?
Either you're wrong in that they're successfully covering up after themselves, or you're wrong in that they're doing it. Either way, you're talking crap.
Woah there partner, you haven't been paying attention. Search your old Windows 3.1 executable for "Stacker"... or google. You might also want to look into some of the other settlements, like the one in France last year. A lot of them involved some very nasty unethical stuff, much of it under the category of theft. You could also buy some drinks for someone you know that worked for a company targeted for ruin by Microsoft, a few hours later you'll not want to partner with it ever again.
It's almost like some movie execs were sitting around and someone said "I'd love to make an interesting thriller with great twists and a killer core concept, but I don't want the mildly retarded to have a hard time following the plot."
I'm not sure this was mentioned elsewhere, but every psychology student learns about the patient H.M., who underwent a complete hippocampal lombotomy to treat his severe epilepsy (thankfully, they no longer do this drastic surgery today).
Long story short; by completely removing his hippocampus, researchers discovered that they eliminated H.M.'s ability to form new memories, and that existing memories for a certain time prior to the operation were erased. H.M. can hold a conversation with you, but within a few minutes he will have forgotten what he was just talking about, and who he was talking to.
I'm not sure what the current research is, but it is widely believed that newly formed memories take some time to become permanent. Of course, the length of time and the specific brain regions involved are still under debate, but any good electrial disturbance to your brain (a siezure, for instance, or getting knocked really hard on your head), will distrupt this system and will wipe out any memories that you have recently acquired.
And, the larger the disruption, the longer the period of time that gets erased, some believe.
This phenomenon of retrograde amnesia has been the center of the debate about the human memory system for a number of decades now. (This was the subject of my last presentation as an undergrad at UIUC, by the way.)
for great justice, this sig has been moved
No. You don't just form strengthen one new connection for every memory. If we knew enough to erase memories, we would know enough to back them up too.
Actually, memories are formed from consolidations of neuronal connections most likely in a somewhat regionally loosely distributed fashion. Think of it as distributed storage of files on particular subnetworks. Of course we neuroscientists do not really know exactly how this is done or even how specific thoughts are encoded. But it is thought by some/many camps that consciousness and memories are an emergent phenomenon that arises out of networks of neuronal connections. The two categories can also be subdivided into consciousness and two forms of memory, long term and short term. (Of course there are those who believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts but....this is science we are talking about). Disruptions of memory are often due to strategic loss of connections in particular portions of cortex, thus pathology becomes critically informative in the study of memory and consciousness.
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For what it's worth, there is a drug called VERSED (pronounced vur-said, two syllables) that is generally classified as "a sedative," one of whose properties is that it erases your memory of whatever you experienced while under sedation.
According to its maker, Roche Laboratories, "in one study, 73% of the patients who received intramuscularly had no recall of memory cards shown 30 minutes after drug administration."
It is commonly used during colonoscopies, not because colonoscopies are terribly traumatic, but because it provides superior muscular relaxation and enhances the effect of fentanyl (an anesthetic agent).
Nevertheless, the manufacturer describes it as "an agent for sedation/anxiolysis/amnesia;" that is, amnesia is considered to be one of the purposes for which it might be administered.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Hey, news reports this week told how Microsoft just lost a lawsuit by SPX where it was demonstrated that MS had stolen the company's patented whiteboard technology and put it in NetMeeting. He's not 'talking crap'; maybe you would benefit from reading more widely.
FWIW, Phillip K Dick has been the inspiration of many movies over the past 20 years or so. According to IMDB (since I don't trust my own memory), he's credited with the inspiration (since he died in '82) of (in chronological order):
"Out of This World" (1962), a TV series based on Impostor (a short story in which aliens who take the place of humans are convinced that they are in fact the humans whose places they took - the concept of identity, what it is, and how it can be determined is a common theme throughout his work).
"Blade Runner" (1982), a movie *very* loosely based on his novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The common theme here is what makes one human - memories, a fragile body, the desire to live, or some other intangible thing (a soul)?
"Total Recall" (1990). Miserable adaptation of a clever idea by PKD. I won't describe the movie, which you've probably already seen, but I'll describe the original story which you probably haven't read (warning:spoilers - skip to the end of the paragraph). A young man pays for a "vacation" in which false memories of a trip as a secret agent to Mars are implanted. Except the company (Rekal, Inc) can't implant the memories, because the man really was a secret agent who went to Mars, but had his memories erased - trying to implant the new ones released the old ones. But he doesn't fully realize what happened, and the old memories haven't fully resurfaced, so he goes back to complain about their bad service. Well, the secret service discovers that he's starting to remember the memories they hid, so they capture him. They'd like to kill him, but as a last attempt to save this potentially-useful agent, they have a shrink examine his psyche for some fantasy that sits even deeper in his psyche than wanting to be a secret agent. They find this deep-seated wish-fulfillment fantasy where, as a child, he encounters an invading alien species of mice. Because of his kindness to them, the aliens agree not to invade Earth as long as he's alive. So they decide to implant this memory in place of the Mars-secret-agent one. Only they discover that it isn't a fantasy after all....
"Confessions of a Crap Artist" (1992). Haven't seen the movie, but according to the IMDB reviews it's a faithful adaptation of the novel of the same name. Not Sci-fi, but great novel nonetheless.
"Screamers" (1995). Again, haven't seen the movie. The story is about a war between robots and humans (Matrix, anyone?), in which the robots create human-like machines to prey on the sympathies of the humans. Once again, the question arises - who's really human, and who's a ticking time bomb?
"Impostor" (2002). See "Out of This World", above.
"Minority Report" (2002). Decent adaptation, except for the fact that they CHANGED THE WHOLE POINT OF THE STORY! (More spoilers) The story at it's heart was fatalistic- it introduced the "pre-crime" idea, in which people are arrested for crimes they are about to commit, regardless of whether they know they will commit them or not. Pre-crime is based on the thoughts of three 'precogs', who can predict the future- if two agree about a future activity, then the person responsible is investigated. The head of pre-crime, John Anderton in the movie (don't remember the name in the story), finds out that he's about to kill someone. He consults the "precogs" (people with pre-cognitive abilities to predict the future) and finds that two of the three think that he's going to kill someone who he doesn't know and has never met, a military leader. The military is upset because pre-crime is making them irrelevant, so they want to destroy its credibility. This leader has Anderton captured, and explains to him their plans for destroying pre-crime. Anderton wants to kill him, but doesn't, because he knows it will play into their hands (by discrediting the head of precrime, they can destroy it). So the military plans a press conference showing Anderton next to this military leader as a way of discrediting pre-crime,
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
Here it is edited a little :-) oops
.. reading state of synapses in the brain, reading recurrent networks at individual neuron level, "burning in" changes to synaptic network strength, and introducing a new recurrent network program to the brain - it is possible that this could be achieved by tegmental magnetic stimulation (TMS), a way of stimulating neurons with magnetic forces. We may already have a way to reset the recurrent networks in the brain ... electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It is thought that ECT works by resting the brains recurrent patterns, requiring it to kinda bootstrap itself into a postition of working again. I read that another poster thought that ECT was barbaric, i know several people that have had ECT and they describe it as the most amazing experience ever. SEveral of them would recommend it to normal healthy people as a good "buzz"
:-)
Imagine being able to wipe a few neurons and lose several months of complete memory. This is absurd , it is like suggesting that everytime I have beer that i lose several months of memory. Sure if i lose a VERY LARGE amount of neurons for binge drinking for several years then i will have significant memory loss, but this is on many levels including anterograde and retrograde amnesia.
Although the preiminent philosophers love to argue this topic into the ground it is the view of several that the brain should be considered like a giant recurrent network. There is a lot of theory behind this view but i will try to presnt some of it. First it is well known that there are several oscilatory waves travelling through segments of the brain. These waves travel around and around in endless loops and often themselves from part of larger waves. It is thought that the information encapsulated in these waves are how the brain works. Therefore a snapshot of memory at any timepoint would consist of an image of the entire recurrent wave at a particular timepoint.
Now it is also known that memory has something to do with strengthening neural connections. However depending on the neuron these have hundreds to thousands of connections with other neurons and memory is defined as to how the recurrent network traverses millions of links... Think that your memory is the state of the whole device rather than the device itself. Therefore we have that destroying individual neurons will reduce tiny parts of the memory in wierd ways, will perhaps reduce the resolution of the memory but not the memory itself. We would also wipe out large parts of memory that were there before htis time period. But technically it could be possible to recreate memories, and/or delete old memories.
I theorise that to do this one would need an accurate snapshot of the absolute relative strength of every synapse at a certian point of time. One would also need to have an accurate picture of the state of recurrent network at this point. One could theoretically change all the synapse strengths back to that which they were previously, and bootstrap the recurrent network to the required value.
Technical challanges
Anyway had my rant for now, us Cognitive scientist types get touchy when people misrepresent how we think the brain works Cheers
"by having individual neurons zapped"?
...which outlines Hebbian dynamic neural assembly quite well.
No way. Memories, as cohesive collections of recollection across time, are not stored. They are re-created as called for. What is stored are very primitive primary details. Just enough of these as are necessary to re-create a memory are called up and associations formed between them. The brain fills in anywhere from some to damn near all of the in-between. This function, called "gestalt" is even more important for memory re-creation that it is for perception, and even there it does a majority of the work. If this sounds error prone, it is. You've got one, and this is how it works. I'm sure you've noticed a few inaccuracies in your memories from time to time.
As for individual neurons, not just no, but hell no. That idea was lost when Donald O Hebb taught us in 1949 that its collections of neurons acting as a network that perform functions. He also taught us that the same neuron can participate in a large number of different networks, according to which sets of connections are held active and which are suppressed.
As obtuse (79208) wrote in "No Grandmother Cell":
> But the current view is that memory is
> highly distributed. If you use a neural
> net as a trivial model of how the brain
> might work, you will realize that for a
> large and complex neural net with diverse
> purposes, there isn't a single cell devoted
> to anything. All the information is contained
> in the strength connections between cells.
> Karl Pribram used the phrase "holographic
> brain." The image on a hologram is
> distributed, so if you break it in two,
> you have two complete images, although each
> is less detailed. If you scratch a hologram,
> you don't lose part of the image, you lose
> detail overall.
Pribram later amended his theory and called the "holonomic". He was disturbed that people were claiming he said that memory was truly a hologram (and he got even more upset of extension of that mistake to consciousness and then the universe). What he did say (in his book Brain and Perception, 1991, Lawrence Erlbuam, ISBN: 0898599954) that Dennis Gabor's mathematics that he devised to describe holography (which won him the 1970 Nobel) could be used to describe the dynamic electrical field that builds up in the cortex and interacts with all local neurons, even those not directly connected, and affects their functioning as the field changes on very short orders of time.
However, the concept still has some explanatory merit. As Sherrington and then Lashley showed in those cortex ablation experiments referenced in most intro psych books, memories are any "place", but rather distributed across area, and even that area is not hard and fast. Removing large areas of cortex, up to as much as 90%, does not remove memories, but does make them less precise, i.e. they lose resolution. In this sense, the holographic metaphor works, although technically inaccurate.
A web site that presents his theory in a way I doubt he'd have much trouble with is at http://www.acsa2000.net/bcngroup/jponkp/ although this is by someone else, and not "sanctioned".
Anyone interested in the details of the theory are invited to examine the last quarter of his book, the appendices thereof. These were written with Basil Hiley (mathematical physicist and previously partner to David Bohm) and a couple of Japanese scientists, Mari Jibu and Kunio Yasue. Here you can see the application of Gabor's work as well as Schroedinger's in attempt to describe the cortical electric field.
To read and understand the entire book takes, in my opinion, a neuroscientist, a physicist and an engineer. And I had two years studying under Karl. I still get stuck in places, being only the first of those three. FWIW, my "scientific pedigree" is, in a direct line of descent of mentors to student, Sherrington, Lashley, Pribram and me.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
how 'bout:
Microsoft's Innovations
Presenting the Microsoft Hall of Innovation
Close Combat
Popular game purchased from Atomic Games
Flight Simulator
Purchased from the Bruce Artwick
Organisation
Age of Empires
Collabaration with Ensemble studios(Gopal R
S)
Microsoft's HTML editor was purchased from
Vermeer Technologies in 1996
FoxPro
This database application came along with
Microsoft's purchase of Fox Software in 1986
Internet Explorer
Microsoft licensed code from Spyglass Inc one of
the two licensees of the original Mosaic code base in 1995 and called it MSIE Microsoft then proceeded to distribute MSIE for free
denying Spyglass substantial royalties for their key contribution to the product
MS-DOS
The original Microsoft cash cow this CPM
clone then called Q-DOS was purchased from the Seattle Computer Company in 1981 Microsoft then
proceeded to thwart Seattle Computer's license rights to the product The tiny company sued
Microsoft and prevailed in court
Object Linking Environment OLE
Microsoft settled a suit with Wang Labs
over patent infringement code portions of OLE which is also the heart of Microsoft's ActiveX
PowerPoint
This presentation software package was renamed and re branded after Microsoft's purchase of Forethought Incin 1987
SQL Server
This important database product is based on
code purchased from Sybase in 1988
Visual Basic
Ruby the foundation for Microsoft's highly
important Visual Basic product was purchased from
Cooper Software in 1991
Visual C
Microsoft purchased the Lattice C code
compiler which became Visual C Microsoft's software development environment
Visual SourceSafe
Purchased from OneTree Software Shortly
after OneTree's SourceSafe was released Microsoft
preannounced a similar application called Microsoft Delta which failed to sell Microsoft then purchased OneTree and renamed SourceSafe as Microsoft Visual SourceSafe
Windows
Technologies used in Windows multitasking
came to Microsoft with their purchase of Dynamical
Systems in 1986 Portions of the interface were
licensed from Apple Computer also in 1986
XENIX
Microsoft's version of Unix was actually
written under contract by the Santa Cruz
Operation(SCO)
Intellimouse
Goldtouch is now suing for patent
violations over. Seems Goldtouch had a meeting with M$ and tried to sell them
their ergonomic mouse technology. M$ didn't buy, but 6 months later released a mouse which looked remarkably simular...
Microsoft Internet Sharing
features in the latest versions of windows are based on technology aquired through the
purchase of Nevod, Inc. (and their product: "NAT1000") in 1999
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