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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!
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.
But they forgot to write it down before trying it out.
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.
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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?
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
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 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.
I need someone to wipe out the images of goatse.cx and tub girl from my memory
*shivers*
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...
You memory contains illegal copies (aka memories) of their stuff. This will put an end to your illegal behavior.
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
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.
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 ----
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.
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!
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.