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Another Way To Erase Memories
amigoro writes "Neuroscientists have discovered that long-term memories are not etched in a stable form, like a 'clay tablet,' as once thought. The process is much more dynamic, involving a miniature molecular machine that must run constantly to keep memories going. Jamming the machine briefly can erase long-term memories." A few months back we discussed a similar removal of rat memories by a different method.
If they get to a point where they are able to target specific memories, for example it could be very helpful to people that have suffered a traumatic event. But from the article it sounds like it's just a plan old memory wiper by switching off a running process, and there's no real control over what gets erased. I suppose that's OK if you really don't mind losing the last couple of years.
I am sure there's a list of negative points that could be made against this technology, I just cant remember what they are.How much would it cost to erase my last 15 years?
I am not left-handed, either!
Obliviate!
So this is more like RAM, where it has to have constant power, than it is a hard drive where the bits stay flipped until reversed by something else?
PKD strikes again
Badass Resumes
The process is much more dynamic, involving a miniature molecular machine that must run constantly to keep memories going. Jamming the machine briefly can erase long-term memories.
Not sure what kind of research these scientists have been doing, but I routinely "jam the machine" with whiskey.
For some reason I can't recall why I got married with this beautiful blonde, and why I keep dreaming about going to Mars with a brunette. Or am I just going crazy?
- Douglas Quaid.
I hear that works wonders
But they forgot to write it down before trying it out.
...Hollywood movie coming true!
I used this jamming machine once and it was ideal for erasing my short term memories.
Its also perfect for erasing short term memories, and it also erases short term memories.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
I still prefer tequila.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
...when Battlefield Earth was released?
Paycheck Anyone?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
What's scary to me is the assumption that memories are not tied into any other function besides conscious dreaming. I hope this memory erasure business never comes to light.
sure, rats can serve as a puzzle pick but the parallells are not equatable to human experience. .we remember shit.
ever seen that scene in "Born on the 4th of July" where all of the drunken parapalegics are like plowing down the stairs after hooking up with those asian prostitutes?
Since this shows that memories can be deleted, wouldn't the next possible step be adding memories?
So - more like DRAM (which not only needs to be kept powered, but also kept refreshed) than SRAM or ROM then.
I get the feeling that memory is a bit like a set of linked lists. If the head node in the list gets mislaid, then the memory might all still be there - but you can't get to it, at least not easily. I've noticed on many occasions I've tried to recall something - I know I know it, but I can't actually access the memory. Then several days later, the thing I was trying to recall will pop into my consciousness, a bit like a background "find / -name something" had been executing all along.
Funnily enough we were just discussing memory on IRC - how if we were playing a piece of classical music on the piano from memory, one bad note and all of a sudden you couldn't continue from where you were without going all the way back to the start, almost like losing the next node in the linked list.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
So, we're wired with dynamic ram?
As if ice crystals smashing every cell to pulp weren't enough, now even if the damage could be repaired there would be no personality left after a cryonic resuscitation.
in rats...
....don't remember...
I've got a simpler experiment. Try using a little ethyl alcohol on a brain circuit (you know, the stuff in beer, whiskey, etc.?) and if you get enough in the right place, no long term memory is formed because the brain is asleep. So a person wouldn't develop an aversion to something that happened while they were blacked out in terms of memory but still conscious otherwise.
But governmental experimenters can't force you to drink to destabilizwe your memories, and because -- to my knowledge most of our useful memories are stored in multiple areas of the brain and integrated by consciousness -- I'm not sure that the availability of a drug that can chemically destabilize memory is a good thing.
Prosecutor: What did you see?
Witness: I
Get the picture?
Hello!! basic neuroanatomy 101: impulses are transmitted by electrochemical means and interpreted by electrochemical means, and presumably stored by changes brought about by electrochemical means. So if they flooded a little chunk of your brain with a neurococktail that fuzzed up the cellular chemistry that caused a change, it stands to reason that the change wouldn't remain stable.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
So your memories are a function of how many molecules you can juggle. But you are more than your memories. Even if I couldn't remember things that happened to me beyond a day ago, I would still have opinions and feelings about situations that occur each day. I wouldn't have specific memories to tie to current events, but I would still avoid some situations and be drawn to others.
Which leads me to wonder, where that "you" is stored and if that storage is "permanent" or easily disrupted. Is my knowledge of mathematics a "memory"? What about my general disposition? Can someone make me drop the "Don't murder people" ball and disrupt my a moral imperatives? That one happens pretty often, actually.
There's no permanence. Just an ever-changing approximation of whatever you envision yourself to be....if Slashdot's Editors work this one out, none of us will "remember" to tag stories as dupes.
If memory is (as the article says):
In other words, long-term memory is not a one-time inscription on the nerve network, but an ongoing process which the brain must continuously fuel and maintain
Crazy idea, the memories I've trusted as being relatively permanent are actually only a few weeks old, or months, but much younger then the experiences they describe -at a molecular level. It's clear that we have limited conscious control over them, bad memories affect people in a number of documented ways. However ignoring the content the memories are just molecules that we can monkey with. My question is: How many other parts or functions in our body are not permanent but maintained with similar molecular functions - scar tissue? Health issues? Just as the body maintains memories, good or bad, does it maintain other things good or bad? Can the body forget to be sick? forget to be Crazy? Could we 'forget' cancer - (molecularly give the cues for the cells not to reproduce or be maintained) -and I know "cure for cancer" is crazy talk - however I love the idea of hacking the molecular mechanisms of the body in a way more clever then massive powersurges of cell destroying drugs and radiation.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
The subject at hand is a rat. One ordinary albino laboratory rat. The place is a cage. A typical cage in a typical lab just like you'd find in any university in any city. Just which cage and what rat isn't important or interesting. What is interesting is what this particular rat remembers... or rather, what he doesn't remember. Because right now, it seems this rat doesn't remember anything. He knows that he's a rat, but that is about all he knows. He also knows that if he's ever going to get out of this cage, he needs to find out just who he is and how he got there. What he doesn't know, and will soon find out, is that right now he is firmly located in one of the deeper regions of... the Twilight Zone.
This could be an exit strategy for Iraq simply wipe the memories of all the Iraqis and poof no more terrorists! or for the paranoid Bush will wipe our memory of the Iraq War and start it over again
There is some anecdotal evidence that when people take the oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth in front of Senate investigation committees, their memory gets instantly erased. Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, Casper Weinberger, George Schultz, Robert McNamara, ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The underlying assumption that these effects have some significant correlation to long-term memory in humans is questionable. Rats are fantastic for testing physiological responses to drugs, as most the involved systems operate similarly. Low level CNS stuff, which may be involved here, is good too. But things touching on consciousness -- like conscious memory, as opposed to conditioned reactions, should not be assumed to have any correlation to experiments like these.
but their logic doesn't show. It could be that the protein they administered just wiped out all memory of a certain type.
To test whether the memory needs regular update (their "little machine" metaphor), they need to show that their protein doesn't harm existing memories, which is the opposite of what their experiment showed.
What am I missing (besides the years 1981-2)?
sigs, as if you care.
If this will lead to a drug to help those who suffer from amnesia, that would be terrific.
you sure as hell seem to need it yourself...
we've always been at war with ______.
_______ on the other hand, has always been our ally.
I forgot my password.
This could explain all the dupes.u
I need someone to wipe out the images of goatse.cx and tub girl from my memory
*shivers*
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/
I'm thinking back to an old New Yorker cartoon I saw. Two rich old men were wearing smoking jackets, sitting in overstuffed chairs in front of a roaring fire. Well-to-do, obviously. One of them has a smile on his face. The other old man scowls at him. "Farnswoth, you're reminiscing about my old loves again!"
At the end of your life, all you have are your memories. What you're proud of, what you regret, it's all in your mind. There was a Red Dwarf episode where Rimmer was feeling despondent about being such a miserable prat. Lister decided to make a birthday present of one of his old loves and had Holly load it into Rimmer's memory. Rimmer was quite smug about remembering how great it was and couldn't figure out how he let such a wonderful woman slip away. When Lister thought it over, he couldn't figure it out either. He'd thought of her as a former conquest, an old flame, but she was really worth more than that, and he just pissed her away like last night's beer.
The Egyptians took memory quite seriously. When someone was an especially naughty boy, his name was erased from history, removed from the monuments, present only in living memory. And once living memory died out, it would be as if he had never lived. The Soviets were also proficient at this sort of documentarial revisionism. Imagine if memories could be edited so easily. It's a scary thought! No longer is it just "We no longer speak of Joe," now it's a genuine question of "Who is Joe?"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I realize this is indeed a bit of flamebait, but I would just like to point out wiping the memories of our enemies would have a very low return for the risk and difficulty. I would be more concerned about using it on citizens. Not that we need it, the media is quite effective at making us forget more than a few months ago. But imagine how difficult it would be to bring a lawsuit against the government for "detaining" people and "questioning" them when they don't remember any of it actually happening. Imagine how hard it would be to convict anyone of wrongdoing in the government by preventing people from being able to testify because they had their memory erased.
Even worse...What about people like Rumsfeld who actively ignore information to try and get away with saying he didn't know, now they can study, plan, and erase.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
...and though it's a bit disorienting at first, I feel refreshed and rejuvenated.
I can't wait to get back to work on the Bush campaign and hopefully undo the terrible excesses of the Clinton administration, with its scandalous pardons, ATF thuggery, and Constitution-trampling Anti-Terrorist Omnibus Act.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Can you add more of these things, or speed them up to reinforce memories the way they did in the RGB Mars series?
...just down shift it for a moment and you can change your long term memories...
Know anyone with experience in doing so?
You'll have Star Wars fans lining up to have their memories of the prequel trilogy permanently expunged.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
and there are 3 process : :)
Process, his child, and his grand child
If the child process had been erased does it actually means that the brain cannot connect with the grand child and the grand process, although he got their PIDs?
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
In Soviet Russia, memories erase you!
Have gnu, will travel.
...but I forgot about it.
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
People have been cooled during heart surgery to the point where there is no brain activity, and held there for quite long. If a human's memory was really dynamic, they'd wake up erased, but tests have shown that these people remember most everything and have about the same IQ as before the surgery.
Also, if your memory were dynamic, it would be more susceptible to things like electric shock.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
By Philip K. Dick, right?
and then enjoy your lack of habeus corpus from the work of this CRIMINAL.
I hope this helps the criminal indictments against The White House.
PatRIOTically As Always,
K. Trout
You memory contains illegal copies (aka memories) of their stuff. This will put an end to your illegal behavior.
..I *somehow* managed to wipe out everything from around 1968 through 1974....
...provided you were sufficiently developed yesterday. If you were never able to produce memories, you'd never develop a personality beyond breathe, put things in mouth, poop, go to sleep. You'd also likely die a very early and unceremonious death because fire was perpetually fascinating and pretty and large, heavy fast-moving objects are probably easy to stop by standing in their way. Even if you avoided killing yourself, it's pretty likely you'd find assistance to that end soon enough as your lack of learning continued to dispatch those around you who /could/ remember how many deaths to date were your fault.
This has been around for centuries. The latest refinement was by Sicilian doctors in New York and was known as the "You didn't see nuttin" technique. With persistent memories, they employed the "whack" method.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Are you a psychologist? Do you know about current treatments and their success rates? Furthermore, who are you to say that we don't want others buying a treatment that might help relieve their suffering? Some types of trauma can not be 'accepted and coped with.'
What a load of authoritarian claptrap. You sound like the type of person who has had some small measure of success dealing with their own minor past hurts and now has THE ONE TRUE ANSWER for every human being on the planet. Good luck with that.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Reverse phrenology.
My blog
OK, I know this is completely off topic, but how is it that someone can take a novel written by there prophet, and make such a travesty out of it?!?!?
You can consciously choose to erase memories if you know how. The trick is to constantly and consistently interdict them. You need to develop a level of introspection wherein you can stop yourself from reviewing a memory before it's all the way there. For example, because most of my thoughts are internally spoken, I just stop myself from completing the sentence. Get good enough, and keep it up for long enough, and you just have the sense that you were about to think something but didn't, nothing is even "spoken" at all.
Now, memories aren't easy to erase. You have to get good at the technique and you have to keep it up for strong memories. Also, the memories can be revived a long time afterwards by items which remind you of them. You may have to get rid of such things or dissociate them from the memory.
In other words, you can control the "machine" yourself and purposefully forget certain things if you do it right, even without drugs. It's not hard, but it does take some practice.
I've heard rumors that American soldiers are slated to be test subjects. This is outrageous! I strongly urge all of you to stop playing computer solitaire and-- Hey, is that the queen of diamonds?
I had this story open in a Firefox tab, switched tabs and saw:
"Slashdot | Another Way To Erase Me..."
Very disturbing.
Only on Slashdot is it normal to see a reference between the human brain, RAM, and a hard drive. So would that RAM be DDR or DDR2?
I'm still a little confused. If only someone could relate this to a car. Then things would be perfect.
Yes, erasing memories is cool, but it's getting back long term memory that really means something. I wonder if this mechanism shuts down with Alzheimer's?
stuff |
It seems to do a great job helping White House officials lose their memories.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...on how long it takes for this article to hit the main page again.
I can see the benifits in this tech, especialy in asisting those that have undergone tramatic experiances. I also see the great potential in abuse. The movie Paycheck comes to mind as one example. Get someone to come in on a top secret project, then wipe their memories when they finished it. More humaine than what they did with tomb designers, still wrong.
Or what of someone kidnaping a key witness in a trial, and giving them a dose. Boom, no more witness without killing them, heck they would probly even forget that they were kidnapped.
I guess it boils down to, just because we can do something, like develop a memory wipeing device, should we??
A drug like this one could be used by criminals to wipe the memories of their victims. This drug would leave obvious traces such as obvious amnesia.
But the other memory drug the article links to works diferently - by preventing the formation of new memories. So that drug would seem like a more likely candidate to be abused as a date-rape drug. Leaving someone retarded and not knowing their own name is far more conspicuous than leaving them not knowing what they did the night before - especially if they were drinking.
...
I want to get into line to have the memories of my first marriage erased. That she-bitch from hell will no longer haunt my dreams!!!!!!
Bravo for nailing the speech style!
Using 'molecules' to erase memory isn't new, it's been done for thousands of years. You drink enough alcohol, your memory shuts down. They have a technical term for it, called a 'blackout'.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
If only we could figure out a way to install this into a small pen shaped device and deliver it through a flash of light....an added bonus would be if we could make up new memories to replace the erased ones!
(*FLASH*)"You will not remember last night. Instead, you will now remember I was the biggest stud you've ever seen and you will tell all your hot friends."
And Jerry Fletcher. And... OTOH, this will be a boon for the Paxans
geek. lawyer.
I didn't read the post you're responding to, but why should a man need to be a psychologist to talk about the mind? No one's asking him for therapy.
*glances at post in question*
Okay, so he could be a lot more tactful, or could use... well, could explain any reasoning he's using there. But still, more flies with honey.
A degree isn't everything.
This time, they'll erase your memory of your prior victory and the new bug will be placed in your scrotum.
And because you killed that hot blonde, you will be programmed to a marriage with Chuck Norris: you're the bitch for a tiger-claw fisting and roundhouse rectal labotomy.
And you have been placed in the body of Howser...Doogy Howser. enjoy.
It takes time and focus to learn and remember anything.
Awesome! Now all we need to do is administer this to Attorney General Gonzales... but I don't think he'll recall taking the drug either...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_(Heroes)
my blog
In SCI-FI series, Eureka (episode three of season one, titled "Before I forget") , Henry invents a hand-held device that erases memories. See Wikipedia for full description. YouTube has a video of showing the device in action here.
Oh, good, now I can finally win The Game.
Manchurian Candidate, anyone?
To do list for Windows
The fact that human brains chilled to inactivity maintain their memory, also hints that frozen brains may very well be recoverable in the future. It's said to be an old myth that freezing brains causes ice crystals to shred the brain cells.
The brain is like a large organic blob of dynamic ram that works on the principle similar to a feedback loop to keep the data fresh.. You block off any part of it, or overload it, and you lose data.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
> A few months back we discussed a similar removal of rat memories by a different method. ...I'd forgotten about that.
- G
Wow, I'm thinking like a comic-book super-villain!
= 9J =
There is no reason to believe that all memories work the same way. Taste and smell aversion, in particular, are so different from other kinds of memories that there's a good chance that they work differently too.
Say, we'd like to empty out Guantanimo Bay, right? Well, we can't just do that now because all those people have terrorist training and jihad indoctrination. One injection later... they HAD terrorist training and jihad indoctrination. Now they can start fresh as Southern Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, or Mormon.
"That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. Losing my religion..."
Did you ever flashy-thing me?
What?
I have a problem with this, maybe because I'm drunk, but still. I'll admit that I don't know anything about the specific synapse TFA is talking about, but it seems to me that the experiment in question was an experiment of olfaction, which is AFAIK pretty much the oldest and least developed part the brain. I've never really read anything about the technicalities of how the brain stores memories, but what I have gathered is that olfaction is "special" in pretty much every sense. can the experiment in question can be generalized?
I hope it isn't Raspberry, I hate Raspberry!
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I've been following Alcor for years now, always love reading their news letter informing of new changes and improvements to cryonics and how many people are now under cryostasis. Indeed I am thinking of getting this done, the price is certainly worth it.. But now I worry, if the research is true then would you come out hundreds of years in the future not knowing who you were? Would you come out as if you were a new-born? Learning difficulties wouldn't be a problem in the future due to chip/memory implementations (When they are able to bring back a person from cryostasis, I'm almost certain this tech would be waiting), but having no recollection of who you were brings up a sore spot. Perhaps it's an advantage though? Being that all your friends and family would have been dead for centuries, you wouldn't have that longing of seeing them again!
My long term memory is already weak. Anything older than about a month starts being at risk to fizzle. This became a real consideration when I had to choose a career, because I could complete classes but then would lose huge swaths of the material the following year. I ended up with a job that relies more on logic than raw memory, and I practiced the art of taking notes.
...will lose its internal state if the clock stops for too long.
Just think with this technology in the wrong hands could do. Bush and Co get this and BAM the Iraq war never happened. Seems like this is a huge disadvantage to the human being; we are our memories and experiences, and if they can be so easily zapped away, that just really makes one feel vulnerable.
Live Free
The protein in question here is PKMzeta, which from the name I'd think is a protein kinase. Apparently it's a fragment of the enzyme Protein Kinase C-zeta, and it is crucial for its constituvely active functioning, which means that it will continuously function.
As far as I recall, there's heaps of drugs that are capable of interfering with constitutively active phosphorylation so as to inhibit or enhance function. In the case of cancer, drugs that inhibit constitutive phosphorylation ie. the use of imitanib in chronic myeloid leukaemia, have enormous utility. But what about one that enhances such functions? What about having a drug that is capable of engaging with the active site of the enzyme as a means of enhancing its function and form new memories? It'll be decades before such drugs can have clinical use, but their function as academic drugs is huge. From their use, we can learn about:
1) How long-term memories are formed and destroyed
2) How physiological and pathological processes influence these
3) The neurochemical and neuroanatomical basis of memory formation
And even then, if we wanted to make a useful drug out of this, a drug to remember as opposed to forgetting, it is a matter of molecular pharmacology, which is more up to science than serendipity. Engineering a drug to be an agonist, or antagonist thereof, has some curious applications. I may not be a pharmacologist, but from studying I've found that having a drug that agonizes or antagonizes the enzymatic or receptor machinery is contingent upon having a drug that:
1) Can fit into the active site(s) of the protein
2) Stimulate it or inhibit it thereof by altering the chemistry of the enzyme, hence enhancing function
We have here, a drug that can fit into the active site of this protein. We could quite well re-engineer it to have enhanced activity, or a longer half-life. Heck, if we wanted to, we could synthesize it and inject bucketloads into mice and see if they develop superb long-term memories. Think of the applications as an adjunct therapy for dementia...think about how mutations in this protein could be responsible for the memory savants we see today.
Of course, we're going out of our depth here. PKM-zeta seems to be well studied in mouse models, I haven't found much info on this in humans.
If you're going that way, Spider Robinson's Mindkiller is probably required reading on the subject.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
A technique to cure trauma already exists, and is well known by yogi and shamans: you just need to continuously move your eyes from left to right and then from right to left !
e _therapy.html
See for example:
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/07/shifting_ey
It's a serious technique !
There is a concept that we adhere to that long and hard way is always the correct one. Yes, many of us believe in that and have seen that working. But look at the world around you, cases you find for long and hard way vs short and easy way are almost equal in number. The result of both ways, is something we will know only in future and by that time, we must have forgotten the original need.
I for the one, have trained my brain to work out in long and hard way, which my brain believes will be beneficial. This is especially with respect to traumas resulting from relationship break ups and physical or emotional abuse.
But there are cases where Medical help is must required, and long way might be greater than 70 years (which is almost human life-span). For those, to suggest the long-hard way is like denying them a good solution. Medical assistance is of great help for them.
Senthil
Quagmire is not only blunt, it's also a fictional comedian on a US'ian soap-theatre. "Let's have sex" is that person's famous line.
Title is "Cheney's Office Attempts To Memory-Hole Embarrassing Video." Quoth from article on PrisonPlanet; A recently discovered video dating from 1994 featuring Dick Cheney warning against an invasion of Iraq has been shrugged off by the Vice President's office who say they cannot comment because at the time Cheney was not Vice President.
A video from the fine agents of the corporators to WWW.GRANDTHEFTCOUNTRY.COM hosted a video on YouTube, that available here.
Let me know what you think, if it's funny don't laugh; our grave is sound-proof, so why advertise what none of us are afforded the corpse-eternal mime the dust of time our flesh returns.
without prejudice
Anybody?
...in the main article. My brief understanding was that the experiment was to teach the aversion, then fuzz the rats' taste memory receptor cells not too much later, then a day, week or month afterward see if the aversion still existed. Or was it time period independent, i.e. teach the rats and reinforce for a month or so (so that the long term memory is theoretically fully formed), and then at differing time periods (a day, week, or month later) do the fuzz chemical, and no matter what the period, the aversion is erased?
And the science still seems double edged unless there was an easy blood test to detect the chemical and one that would be able to tell days, weeks, or months later. Otherwise everyone's memory considered to be tamperable vs. just fallible.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...