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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.
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.)
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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!
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.