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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.
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?
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.
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First off, you're comparing memory retention to memory formation, two very different processes. From a research point-of-view, their finding is quite significant (and IAANeuroscientist, with my area being electrophysiological studies of memory systems and how they are impaired by alcohol). Specifically, they've identified a protein that seems to be essential for the long-term maintenance of memories in cortex.
As a mentioned elsewhere, this finding probably won't help much therapeutically, as it is too far-reaching. What's really needed for treatment of memory-based pathologies is something that erases a memory (or prevents a memory from being restored) when it is accessed so that you can target specific memories, and there's evidence that it might be feasible.
Paranoia aside finding ways to keep the memories from being lost will be a big boone to the increasing Alzheimer's issue. Already been kinda sorta done. David Brin short story, archaeologists are going through the landfills of the 20th century for research and start finding skeletons. At first they're thinking it's a few mob murders but they end up finding hundreds, thousands, millions. More landfills are excavated and they wind up with enough skeletons to account for a population approaching the entire United States. No answer was even provided in the story but the one I came up with was body snatcher aliens who replaced the existing humans, chucked the bodies, and took over living as humans, not letting their children know what had really occurred.
A story involving precise memory manipulation like this goes beyond mere Manchurian Candidates, you'd be looking at Memento meets Cold War spy movie. Who is the enemy? What do they know? What do they know that you know? What do they know that you used to know that they don't want you to find out? Do they know that you know that they know that you know that they know that you know? I think synapses would be burnt out just trying to cope.
I had a story idea along these lines, not with memories but with not knowing who is who. Humans lack FTL travel but do have FTL communications via ansible. Humanity is spread across thousands of lightyears in millions of communities and a pervasive metaverse keeps society connected. An eccentric character grows tired of remote experiences, even if they are as keen as real life experience, and he decides to go see his favorite star system personally. He purchases a starship, goes into cryo and makes the voyage. He comes to decades later in a system devoid of human life. Everything is in blasted ruin. He logs back into the metaverse and the system is still there, pretty as you please. He investigates and finally discovers that there is a device of unknown origin sitting at the system's ansible junction. It is providing a high fidelity simulation of the entire ruined system, as if it had never been destroyed.
Who destroyed the system? Why did they do it? Where are they going next? How many systems still exist, how many have been wiped out? Is he the last human? The alien infiltrators are already in the metaverse, you cannot tell if who you are speaking to is really human or alien or mere simulacrum. How can you fight an enemy you cannot even prove is real? Paranoia will destroy ya but that doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
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I can verify this from personal experience. When I was a teenager I had a bad drug experience that messed up my thought processes. I had a panic reaction that fed itself; a fear of being afraid. Because the fear was of fear itself, I found myself unable to control it because the moment I believed I might be starting to panic, panic immediately ensued because I was panicking about panicking. It sounds weird I know but it was a feedback loop of fear and panic that was very difficult to control. People talk about "panic attacks" and I am not sure if this is the same thing, but I can tell you that it was a really awful thing to go through. I can say without hesitation that it was the worst feeling I have ever had in my life; in fact I believe that it is the worst feeling I am capable of feeling, because my entire mental faculty was devoted to feeling panic. There was nothing else. I told myself that if I couldn't get over it, I would kill myself because it would be better to be dead. And I believe I would have carried through on that. But luckily the young mind (I was 15) is pretty malleable and I was able to figure a way out of it.
Because these panic attacks happened only once every couple of days, I focused on the time between the attacks. The attacks were precipitated by a fear that they were going to happen, so if I got myself into the wrong frame of mind, and allowed myself to start to panic (a sort of aura would come over my mind as the panic started, like I could feel it descending on me), and if I didn't act quickly to distract myself, there was no hope of getting out of it. So I decided to stop fighting it and just "let it happen", sort of convincing myself that "I survived the last one so I can survive this one". And it helped immensely to realize that even if it did keep happening, it wouldn't kill me (unless I killed myself!), and I would have a couple of days to live relatively normally again. I focused on feeling like it didn't matter that I would panic, like it was something to just get over with and move back on with normal life, and once I was able to convince myself of that, I had a tool to take the edge off of the panic once it started happening. And that was enough to often times prevent the panic attack entirely. And once I could prevent a panic attack once in a while, I gained confidence because I thought "well not only do these panic attacks not matter, they are actually preventable". And once I started gaining that confidence, it became easier and easier to avoid them.
Just as the feedback loop of fear was causing the panic attacks, a feedback loop of confidence (where the confidence caused more confidence because the confidence itself was the tool for preventing the panic attacks) was the solution. Eventually I stopped having the attacks. I did relapse a couple of times throughout my teen years, but only briefly. I also had some months-long duration of minor depression, which I attribute to my brain having to devote so many "feel good" neurons to preventing the attacks, and having less left over to keep my general happiness at a normal level. But by the time I went to college, I was for all intents and purposes over it completely.
I am 35 now and haven't had a panic attack in 10 years or so. Although it does make me a little nervous to talk about in depth, even writing this felt a little like skirting the edge of fear. But I have no doubt that once I move onto the next Slashdot article I will have relaxed my nerves entirely.