Scientists Discover Way To Reverse Memory Loss

electricbern writes "Scientists have accidentally discovered how to reverse memory loss by stimulating a specific part of the hypothalamus. Good news for people with Alzheimer's and those who just forgot where they left the car keys."

Comments

Wait...

[sexconker]

I forgot what I was going to post.

Re:Wait...

[MightyMartian]

I forgot what I was going to post.

Relax. We can get that right back for you. Now all I have to do is make an incision right there... yeah, and could you hand me that car battery and those jumper cables?

Been there, done that

[philspear]

Everytime I shock myself I remember fresh why I don't like shocking myself.

Dammit..

[mobby_6kl]

I guess from now on I'll have to perform the 8 level DoD 5220.69M brain wipe instead of the plain old erase procedure :(

Re:Memory loss

[MightyMartian]

What side effects?

Being unemployed and having the sex drive of a frozen burrito.

Can we force these electrodes into the heads ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

... of the politicians who keep saying "I don't recall", "I don't remember" in the Senate investigations?

..oh! wait.

If you are going to insert electrodes into politicians, why waste it on their head? There are better choices available.

Or just don't load Vista

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I find I lose more than half my memory when I load Vista.

Re:Wait... If I forget...

[davidsyes]

-- how to eat
-- how to dump
-- how to wipe
-- how to bathe
-- how to relax
-- how to drive
-- how to ride a bike
-- etc...

What is there to remember?

Maybe it's not mere repetition, but intensity of act of repetition (not (bad) counting sex, or hemorrhoids, and other unpleasant things...) that helps us remember?

But, is there any proof that Alzheimer's victims forgot how to have sex? Swear, etc? (Not talking about those with stroke-like side-effects such as total motor or vocal or sensory failure...)

Re:Wait... If I forget...

[snowraver1]

"not (bad) counting sex, or hemorrhoids, and other unpleasant things...) "

WTF!?! Sex... Hemorrhoids....... Unplesasent things... I don't want to know...

Accidentally discovered?

[PPH]

What? Did they forget what they were looking for in the first place?

apply the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag please

[Jafafa Hots]

Speaking as someone with crap memory as a result of a head injury, I wouldn't risk it. Yes, I have had severe amnesia. Ever see the movie Memento? I was like that, but fortunately most of the effects in my case were temporary, but I still have problems.

However, I also have PTSD, which is at least in part an overstimulation of the amygdala. And I've dealt with the unpleasant effects of psych meds which doctors hand out like candy without really seeming to understand their full effects.

When tinkering with the brain, unintended consequences can be severe, and nobody seems to really give a crap about those unintended consequences except for the person who has to deal with them.

Leave well enough alone is usually the best motto when it comes to the noggin, unless your life and disability is too intolerable so you're willing to take any chance.

Re:apply the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag please

[Jafafa Hots]

Possibly alzheimers, yes. And despite your obnoxiously rude and dismissive attitude, I'll try to explain further.

The mind is the essence of who we are. People who have not gone through these experiences like to think that their personality, their very being is an innate feature of themselves, unchangeable.

It's not. Who you are is merely chemistry. Fuck around with that chemistry, and you become a different person. I've experienced that. Most doctors haven't.

People look at things simplistically, they focus on ONE aspect of the brain's function. Memory. Depression. Hand you a pill that they know raises the levels of mood-enhancing chemicals, and there's your depression cure. Anything that happens that's unrelated to your depression is simply labelled a "side-effect," and unless it seems to be immediately life-threatening, no further attention is paid to it.

But the person experiencing it can come to regret their choice. The immediate effects can be subtle, and the perception of the person can be altered so that they don't realize the change themselves, much the way stroke victims often don't realize the extent of their disability.

You can end up a wholly different person. And even if others around you don't make the connection, you may find some day years later that you've lost yourself as a person.

I don't expect most of you to understand that. But what I'm saying here is that when it comes to the brain, you may like the initial results, and that's all the docs will care about - your memory is better. For some people that will be fine. For others, they may find that with their newly refurbished memory comes severe depression, stress, or a change in personality that years down the road they find intolerable.

In my case, doctors tinkering with my brain caused personality changes that initially seemed exhilarating. It was only years later that I recognized that I was behaving like a sex-crazed manic depressive. The initial problems I had were minor and temporary compared with the results of their "cure."

Re:apply the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag please

[dalutong]

I can relate to what you're saying. I was hit by a jeep while crossing the street (at a pedestrian crosswalk, thank you) when I was in high school. I had memory problems after that, and slowed cognition, though I seemed to recover fully after a few months. Oddly, I lost my memory two years after that. I still have a terrible memory -- 6 months after I went to India (after my memory loss) I exclaimed "I've been to India?" after being told about the trip. I could go on forever, but it would be a long story. If you ever see a book called "Some Observations - What you can learn by losing your memory" you can read all about it. (Not yet written/published, btw.)

Back to the point. I've very cautious with what I attempt. I'd rather be who I am than try everything to be a "normal" someone else. I've found ways to get a lot out of having no memory, and I think I've gotten more out of life because of it. I'm not saying that no one would pursue these treatments, I'm just agreeing with the parent that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. And for such odd situations, it's hard to get enough of a sample of people who can tell you what it is like (since it can affect who you are, which affects you ability to declare what it was like.)

Good news for

[spazoid12]

"Good news for people with Alzheimer's and those that just forgot where he left his car's key."

Also good news for those who done forgot them gramma'h rules from the schoolin' days.

Re:Michael Crichton's "terminal man"

[mmell]

Mr. Crichton's work was based on sound, confirmed science, dating back to the '40's and earlier - even by the turn of the century, medical science was beginning to understand that direct, external stimuli to the brain resulted in perceptual activities - memories, smells, emotions, etc. - but again, I don't think there was a great deal of truly scientific work in the field until the '40's and '50's.

And the shocks didn't make him murderous - the shocks conditioned his brain to trigger a psychomotor epileptic seizure (to experience the pleasure of a shock) - eventually, the conditioning caused seizures which overrode the neural pacemaker's ability to moderate his brain's electrical activity.

Me lose brain? Uh-oh

[weighn]

while not wanting to bring the mood down, innit funny how much R&D goes into "curing" Western maladies like erectile dysfunction and pickled brain cells while millions die each year from neglected diseases ... just my whine for the day folks. Carry on.

Re:Me lose brain? Uh-oh

[TrekkieGod]

I'm not anti-science, just bewildered at the trends and drivers for growth (even on campus) that come from the pursuit for the research dollar.

I think you misunderstood my argument. I didn't think you were anti-science. Your comment led me to believe you're a well-meaning guy who is concerned about the welfare of people who are less fortunate than you. I think you set your sights on the wrong problem though.

The reason so much R&D money is being spent in things like anti-aging and anti-obesity is because these are unsolved problems. The diseases listed in your wikipedia link are solved problems. If the economy in the third world countries catch up, they disappear. Dengue Fever, for example, is transmitted by mosquitoes. If you have the resources to invest in mosquito control, the problem disappears (such as the mosquito eradication program in the united states back in the 1960's, which is why we don't have a dengue problem here--the antiviral drug isn't necessary to end the disease). Most of those other diseases, such as parasites, also go away once people start living in more sanitary conditions. If you want examples of a disease that isn't as vain as "limp dicks" that gets plenty of R&D, just look at cancer. That problem can't be solved with by simply improving the economy, so there's a lot of R&D investment.

So the question is, why do those diseases still exist? Lack of resources. And if the R&D resources get shifted to solve those problems, the resources to pay for the newly found medicine will still be non-existent, and the "solution" won't get deployed. Case in point, AIDS medication. People with AIDS in the US can lead relatively normal lives with the available medication (ok, they still have their share of problems, but their life expectancy is significantly higher than it would be without the medication). In Africa, they can't afford it, because the patents make those medicines way too expensive to buy from the first-world pharmaceutical companies, and they can't produce it cheaply in those countries without paying the royalties to those same pharm companies. Your study, coming from the "Commission on Intellectual Property Rights" was a biased study designed to fight this particular criticism in favor of maximizing the amount of cash the pharmaceuticals get to squeeze out of their patents. The obvious flaw is that the same countries that DO respect patents, are those that can't afford the already existing drugs.

However, even those AIDS drugs aren't the solution to the problem. Again, that's another disease that mostly goes away with an improved economy and education. If you understand how AIDS is transmitted, you can completely avoid it (assuming the hospitals in your country check their donated blood and organs for diseases, as well as having the resources to keep their surgical instruments sterilized). That's why the united states has a significantly lower incidence of the disease even though people with it can live longer and therefore would be able to transmit it to more people over a longer period of time. Since the vast majority of people here understand how the disease is transmitted, and has access to condoms, the problem doesn't spread out of control.

Original research abstract

[FleaPlus]

FYI, here's the original abstract for the research the news article is based on:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/117902419/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Memory enhancement induced by hypothalamic/fornix deep brain stimulation

Clement Hamani, MD, PhD 1, Mary Pat McAndrews, PhD 2, Melanie Cohn, PhD 2, Michael Oh, MD 1, Dominik Zumsteg, MD 3, Colin M. Shapiro, MD, PhD, FRCPC 4, Richard A. Wennberg, MD, FRCPC 3, Andres M. Lozano, MD, PhD, FRCSC

Bilateral hypothalamic deep brain stimulation was performed to treat a patient with morbid obesity. We observed, quite unexpectedly, that stimulation evoked detailed autobiographical memories. Associative memory tasks conducted in a double-blinded on versus off manner demonstrated that stimulation increased recollection but not familiarity-based recognition, indicating a functional engagement of the hippocampus. Electroencephalographic source localization showed that hypothalamic deep brain stimulation drove activity in mesial temporal lobe structures. This shows that hypothalamic stimulation in this patient modulates limbic activity and improves certain memory functions. Ann Neurol 2008;63:119-123
Received: 5 July 2007; Revised: 31 August 2007; Accepted: 4 October 2007

Re:Memory loss

[MightyMartian]

uh IDK about you but one of the reasons I stopped smoking is the sex-drive was too overwhelming. I would get high and, rather than read papers like I planned, I would end up jerking off like 3 or 4 times. About 5 months ago I got higher than I had ever been before and decided I just couldn't take it anymore and went to one of those SF asian massage parlors. After that I decided it had gone way too far, and I stopped. For the past 5 months I've been scared shitless that I caught something; I'm waiting 1 more month to be tested since some don't show until 6 months.

So, as far as weed eliminating sex drive, you're definitely wrong.

I may be wrong about sex drive, but I think your post reveals some other side-effects.

Personally, I welcome our ....

[PPH]

... who did you say it was again?

The soul is chemistry

[AlpineR]

I totally agree that a person's personality is strongly tied to their body chemistry. I have personal experience with chemotherapy, a variety of psycho-active drugs, and kidney failure. What I was amazed to discover was how much these changes to my body chemistry altered my personality. I am mostly back to my old self, but with new respect for how different I could be and how much of personality is based on chemistry.

As computer nerds we are likely to think of the brain as a Turing computer. The hardware and environment don't matter, just the programming. So we assume that someone's personality is entirely determined by the capacity of their brain computer, their experiences, and conscious decisions.

But the brain's mental state is sensitive to the chemical environment influenced by the other organs and glands. Seeing how changes in kidney function changed my mental abilities, I think maybe the Egyptians were not so silly to consider the kidney and liver to be as important as the brain for carrying a person's soul.

The experience has also made me more tolerant of other personalities. I could be those people even with my own brain but a different set of organs. I wonder if there have been any studies of personality change after liver and kidney transplants. What would happen if we could someday perform a brain transplant. Should we consider the soul and identity to transfer with the brain or with the body, or is a new combination a new person?

head injuries

[falconwolf]

Speaking as someone with crap memory as a result of a head injury, I wouldn't risk it.

As someone also with crappy memory due to a head injury, I survived a Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI, I'd be willing to take part in a study to investigate whether something like this would help me.

fortunately most of the effects in my case were temporary, but I still have problems.

Unfortunately unless there's a breakthrough more than likely in my case it's permanent.

When tinkering with the brain, unintended consequences can be severe, and nobody seems to really give a crap about those unintended consequences except for the person who has to deal with them.

I look at it the oppose to you, because of people like you people like me are being prevented from seeing possible breakthroughs in neurology, oh and cancer treatment.

Leave well enough alone is usually the best motto when it comes to the noggin, unless your life and disability is too intolerable so you're willing to take any chance.

Not only is my life so intolerable I'd be willing to take a change, but I'd leap at such a chance. If I weren't so chickenshit I'd have ended my suffering years ago.

Falcon

Re:Memory loss

[MillionthMonkey]

having the sex drive of a frozen burrito.

But a frozen burrito is stiff, hard, and meaty. And look at the shape.

I'm going to Mars

[gulledondervan]

These folks just sold me a fantastic Mars vacation package. I'm going to be a spy and meet a sleazy brunette.

Sincerely,

Douglas Quaid

P.S. Do you know where I can find Kuato?

Bluescreening

[MillionthMonkey]

I have problems with memory, because I have intractable epilepsy with a cluster of seizures every few weeks. Nobody knows what causes them; it's not an aneurysm or anything like that, because MRI, PET, and CAT images all look normal. My neurologist said I was apparently born with a "wiring abnormality", which actually sounds kind of cool. So I get a chance every few weeks to experience recovery from severe brain trauma, of varying degrees, with no permanent physical injury. It severely impairs memory and recall, but after you go through it a couple hundred times you remember enough to get a pretty good perspective of what recovery from brain trauma is like. And you can pick up a couple of insights about how brains work and what you experience when your brain has to reconstruct its state from scratch after a hard reset.

First of all, one thing I've realized about being stupid is that it's hard to recognize your own stupidity. (Which you might guess.) A seizure can trigger an IQ drop of 80-90 points and it takes a good part of a week for it to drift back up to 160 or 170 or whatever it is. I sometimes think it's over and that I have all my wits back, but then three days later I have to rewrite all the shitty code I've been writing for the past few days. It's generally well formed, looks OK, and is easy to read, but it somehow lacks direction and it turns out to do nothing useful.

Short term memory is consolidated into long term memory through some pipeline that involves several days of processing. If it gets disrupted by an episode of brain trauma, the result is retrograde amnesia: memories formed during the previous few days are damaged and dim. Stuff learned then will usually have to be relearned. There is no hard edge to it; there are memories right up to the point of failure- but they get dimmer and dimmer up to the day of the seizure, which is just a fog of blurry memories. I can actually teach people things that just a few days later they'll have to teach back to me.

The most terrifying times are when short term memory doesn't work at all, when things go in one ear and out the other. That always produces mind-numbing terror that never stops; you're perpetually surprised by it. I can tolerate it once in a while, since it's brief and not permanent, but if I ever get diagnosed with Alzheimers or a degenerative dementia I'll make sure there's a gun in the house. My grandmother is like this now and she is always scared whenever I see her. She doesn't recognize any of us anymore. This was a really proud woman most of her life, a little snooty even, and now she doesn't even know where the toilet is in her house.

Occasionally a seizure can produce a fugue, where you wander around in a daze, totally incoherent. This happened to an epileptic friend of mine just last month- she was walking around Salt Lake City in a fugue, underdressed in 7 degree weather at 3 AM when the cops found her. When this happens, it's not always obvious what's wrong. I usually just think I'm looking for something. What, I can't remember, but it doesn't occur to me to think about it. It's easy to get lost, and I've found myself in some pretty weird places. One time (back when I had a car) I got lost driving home from work in a fugue. I didn't hit anybody or run any lights, just like my code looks OK and compiles, but the longer it takes to do something, the more likely it is to get screwed up.