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Brain Cells Observed Summoning a Memory
Anti-Globalism writes "Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it."
Like the one where I rtfa'd.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Past studies have shown how many neurons are involved in a single, simple memory. Researchers might be able to isolate a few single neurons "in the process of summoning a memory", but that is like saying that they have isolated a few water molecules in the runoff of a giant hydroelectric dam. The practical utility of this is highly questionable.
For every guy out there, (misogynist comment inbound) I have to say I hope this leads to better understanding of how women communicate and remember things as compared to men. Perhaps there will be a translator, or a pill to make them more understandable? doh!
Well, perhaps this will lead to true understanding of memories, and how the brain actually functions. I hope. I'd like to see some real AI in my lifetime and the human brain is the best example we have of how to create that.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm hoping this six pack will wipe out 3rd grade. Man I hated that Tommy Butler douche bag.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Knowing how a memory is stored and how the brain can recreate it might lead to some crazy new technologies in the future, such as being able to load gigabytes of data into your brain by using energy to manipulate the brain into "remembering" things that were never there. Of course, it could lead to some extremely scary scenarios, like messing with people's heads by putting things in there that aren't supposed to be. I hope the scientists are being really, really careful on this one!
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
What does a memory of what a memory being recovered look like?
I sometimes have epileptic seizures which make me spontaneously remember past events. Sometimes it causes me to recall events which may not have happened. I am literally processing garbage data.
The seizure often interferes with the recording of memory, probably because it is messing with the replay of memory at the same time, so it is difficult to report exactly what the experience consists of after the event, beyond a simple outline.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: September 5, 2008
For the first time, scientists have recorded individual brain cells fetching a spontaneous memory.
For free access to this article and more, you must be a registered member of NYTimes.com
To summarize the article, researchers have determined that the neurons which are fired when an event is experienced are the same neurons that are fired when it is remembered. That's all it says. It does not say that our experiences and memories don't independently exist, just that they correlate with neural activity.
I just want to know when I will be able to download into my mind knowledge. I'll take an order of all the languages in the world, with a side of advanced mathematics and physics, and maybe some animal science for dessert.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
September 5, 2008
For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving
By BENEDICT CAREY
Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.
The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.
Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).
The experiment, being reported Friday in the journal Science, is likely to open a new avenue in the investigation of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, some experts said, as well as help explain how some memories seemingly come out of nowhere. The researchers were even able to identify specific memories in subjects a second or two before the people themselves reported having them.
"This is what I would call a foundational finding," said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. "I cannot think of any recent study that's comparable.
"It's a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel" of summoning past experiences.
The new study moved beyond most previous memory research in that it focused not on recognition or recollection of specific symbols but on free recall â" whatever popped into people's heads when, in this case, they were asked to remember short film clips they had just seen.
This ability to richly reconstitute past experience often quickly deteriorates in people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, and it is fundamental to so-called episodic memory â" the catalog of vignettes that together form our remembered past.
In the study, a team of American and Israeli researchers threaded tiny electrodes into the brains of 13 people with severe epilepsy. The electrode implants are standard procedure in such cases, allowing doctors to pinpoint the location of the mini-storms of brain activity that cause epileptic seizures.
The patients watched a series of 5- to 10-second film clips, some from popular television shows like "Seinfeld" and others depicting animals or landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. The researchers recorded the firing activity of about 100 neurons per person; the recorded neurons were concentrated in and around the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain known to be critical to forming memories.
In each person, the researchers identified single cells that became highly active during some videos and quiet during others. More than half the recorded cells hummed with activity in response to at least one film clip; many of them also responded weakly to others.
After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report "what comes to mind." The patients remembered almost all of the clips. And when they recalled a specific one â" say, a clip of Homer Simpson â" the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.
"It's astounding to see this in a single trial; the phenomenon is strong, and we were listening in the right place," said the senior author, Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Tel Aviv.
His co-authors were Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv, Michal Harel and Rafael Malach of
A core dump...
No one I know has ever contested that memories are stored in the "mind." What is debated is whether they are stored in the brain (as opposed to DNA, RNA, patterns in the physical structure of the brain, ect.) In this subject that distinction is very important. Particularly given that from a neuroscience perspective, "Mind" and "Soul" might as well be synonymous.
This is certainly a large step towards understanding memories, but it doesn't tell us anything about where the memories are stored, just what part of the brain activates when a memory is recalled. (That they've got it down to specific neurons is either highly impressive or a exaggeration in my estimation.)
Oh and "Soul" = "Dark Energy" you know "We have no fucking clue how to account for the data so we're going to name it this until we come up with something better."
When they can isolate the "Bing" moment (the point at which neurological function gives rise to experiential phenomenon) then we can put down the idea of a soul entirely, not before.
That's quite fascinating! (I hope the condition isn't too serious, of course.) The idea of a brain processing garbage data is certainly thought-provoking. Do you have any buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could lead to an exploit?
Get out of my head!
Sometimes it causes me to recall events which may not have happened. I am literally processing garbage data.
Everyone remembers events that never happened. "False memory" they call it, and according to trusty old Wikipedia there's no way to distinguish between a false memory and a true one.
This is interesting and I don't mean to be cynical, but neuroscience is at least 10 years behind cognitive science and psychology. I can't wait until they can use all their fancy technology to tell us something psychologists and psychophysicists don't already know :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_Embedded_Cognition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_cognition
This is the kind of claim you make in the NY Times or another public media outlet: while it might happen, because sometimes people do stupid things, I doubt the actual research article will go so far as to say anything so far-fetched.
While it makes logical sense (memory, so far as it is located any single place, does seem to be strongly linked to the deeper, distinct organs within the brain, like the hippocampus), there is no actual way to "know" what exactly is going on: this is a quasi-experimental design, at best, and at most all they can reliably say is "Similiar structures in the brain responded in a similar way during recall of an event compared with how they behaved during the observation of the event itself." For example, it has been shown in some studies that areas in the occipital area of the brain (which has been strongly linked to vision) "light up" when a subject is asked to describe a previously viewed visual stimulus: however, researchers in these studies make no claims to such being evidence of an observed activation of a memory, which is essentially the claim being made here. Typically, the most they will offer in such studies is that the brain may be "spoofed" into thinking it is viewing the same stimulus again, thus activating certain, similiar function. Logically, both the visual research and this phenomena certainly sound like memory: but logic isn't science, nor is something true because it makes logical sense. Newtonian mechanics make logical sense, but good luck building a model of the universe as successful as one provided by quantum/relativistic physics, which often times make utterly no logical sense.
This is one of the key problems in any kind of study concerning phenomena which are part and parcel of the conscious mind/brain: being that we do not experience the subject's perceptions ourselves, and since consciousness is so singular and personal, we might never be able to say with any clear confidence what we are observing in the brain. However, kudos to the researchers. At the very least they've examined a function (whatever it is) within the brain that is an utter pain in the ass to study.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Well I have created a few humans already and they also have children. The normal way is much easier. As far as neural arrays that exceed human understanding this is a sticky question when you ask who would be the designated driver. Very much depends on how all this is implemented and I imagine it will be a bigger zoo than the internet. It is easy to use machines to increase our effectiveness but it levels the playing field of who is smarter when everybody has an AI as an advisor. It seems we are backing into another problem like the internet and how it influences life itself in odd ways.It is good to consider what it will become before it becomes a reality. I think the goals of the people who create the machines will tell how they effect those who don't prepare for the eventuality.
We're one step closer to a "Forget your first sexual encounter" pill.
Don't forget Jujitsu and a crash course in helicopter piloting.
Anyone? Anyone?
or else!
As far I know, not only religious people use the term "soul". Psychologists use it too, although in a a little bit different meaning as the various afterlife-guys.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
When they can isolate the "Bing" moment (the point at which neurological function gives rise to experiential phenomenon) then we can put down the idea of a soul entirely, not before.
Sadly, not everyone will. While everyone who has a clue about science certainly will, a lot of people rather trust religion than science and will continue to believe that memories are stored in the soul. After all, there are also a lot of people out there who still believe in ID, even with all the overwhelming scientific research against it.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Cue song..."The human brain is for porn.
Of course, this will mean rickrolling will be taken to a whole new level.
Because I'd laugh my ass off at somebody who thought they would be able to jump straight into a 7th dan Karate Kata, and fall flat on their face.
Yes, muscle memory is stored in the cerebellum, not the cerebrum. That's why you don't have to "think" about it to do it.
Most of the martial arts training is about moving the information from the latter to the former.
I think that for some people the 'soul' theory is the reason they trust religion, not the other way around.
You'll have to agree that it is a bit depressing knowing for certain that your existence is just the few years you spend 'alive' and after that it's all gone. And for some, it's too depressing.
Humans need to know they'll live on somehow, that their lives have some meaning. And if you're not famous enough to hope for historical eternal life, than soul is what you have left.
I think he just said that.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Actually, I find the thought of simply ceasing to exist not that bad; although I seriously don't want to die (and thus are transhumanist), believing in no afterlife were you would be judged gives you a nice feeling of freedom - while religious people usually try to avoid a lot of things since they want to reach heaven (or whatever else they believe in how they will be rewarded for a life devoted to their god[s]), I act on my own moral criterias without any pressure, being free to choose what is right and what not on my own.
Though yes, I fully agree with you.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
...according to trusty old Wikipedia there's no way to distinguish between a false memory and a true one.
Sure there is, just check the revision history and talk pages.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Neo: I know Kung-Fu.
Morpheus: Show me.
Neo: It starts at 0x21b3a5da.
Maybe he meant 'Bestiality'?
and several other Asian terms.
MP3 Search Engine
stereotype much ? Incredible... How can you actually stereotype an entire gender based on a relatively small sample ? Quite probably taken only in a limited geographical region
Really, you should get out more, there are several billion women out there, surely some of them must not abide by your stereotype ? If not *most* of them ?
MP3 Search Engine
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I want it to work the other way, as a backup mechanism. Every day I get older, and a bit of my RAM seems to fizz & burn and takes away the bytes that were stored in there. I accept the irreplaceable loss of the memory but I wish I didn't forget things too. I could easily page out the least-used memories and store them safely off-site.
Way out in the water. See it swimming?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Anyone who believes that they will meet (and remember) their deceased family members when they get to Heaven. Anyone who thinks that they will still have and/or know their own name when they get to Heaven. Anyone who believes in ghosts. So probably about 80% of Americans (that's not an attack, just an estimate).
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
well... first, keep in mind(shush), that muscle memory, is the memory of physical movements, probably related to your motor strip in your brain, which would end up being extremely similar to recalling any other memory.
But still, you wouldn't be able to do it, because your body wouldn't be trained hard enough, and if you attempted to pull off advanced martial art movements, you'd probably end up pulling some muscles, and even potentially causing major damage to ligaments and what not, do to them not being stretched properly for the action.
Particularly given that from a neuroscience perspective, "Mind" and "Soul" might as well be synonymous.
Actually, scientifically speaking "soul" is not synonymous to much else than "religious mumbo jumbo".
It's a redundant hypothesis that doesn't really explain anything, it doesn't provide a single experimentable prediction and it's beyond observations by definition. You might need it for your faith, but science sure as hell has no use for it.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
One Repository of the Ancients coming right up. Along with it you get advanced healing, telekinesis and other funky skills (Disclaimer: Side effects include loss of English, severe headache, lack of mental control, and possible death)
it's all about bus speed.
Balderdash!
I've read a number of books which discuss in detail the fact that memory is stored non-locally, in a method similar to the way a hologram stores information non-locally. The book 'The Holographic Universe' is the most recent example that I've read. It's a fascinating book - well worth a read. In fact I've read it twice now. With respect to memory, it goes on to say that in experiments with mice, researchers said they were incapable of destroying a memory of how to complete a maze by surgically removing brain tissue. The more they removed, the more foggy the memory appeared, but it never disappeared. This strongly backs the holographic storage method that the book postulates.
If these scientists think they've seen an individual brain cell recall a memory, then I think they're horribly mistaken.
you think that something called free will exist?
Why is it everyone assumes that the soul-world connection works both ways? Who's to say that every consciousness isn't just a listener, somehow able to interpret a mind, and what's going on, and yet have no magical abilities over the matter contained therein. If I put someone who is in a very drowsy state in front of a TV, give them a steering wheel, and show a first person video if reckless driving, they'll think they're doing it. They'll try to avoid things (or hit things).
I submit to you that just maybe, you do have a 'soul', which is your consciousness. It has intimate knowledge of the goings on in your head. All it can see and hear and smell and taste and feel is that information which is fed into your head. Since it has the intimate knowledge, your consciousness thinks it is making these decisions.. but it is not. It's just intimately watching the process.
You think you're thinking about it, but you're just watching and interpreting a brain taking in stimulus. Therefore I won't feel bad when you troll me.
When I download the latest X-Files movie, I'm not stealing because I'm not making off with a physical object. However, the memories in my mind are a physical object, and therefore not metaphysical mumbo jumbo. ...Wait, what? What is this sudden stench of hypocrisy?
Maybe information is not physical, but some sort of abstract collection of relations between bits of data, and more or less separate from the media which contains the data? Maybe something along the lines of Russell's definition of mathematics...
He said a lot of really smart things. Here's a bunch of them:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bertrand_russell.html
All rites reversed 2010
As far I know, not only religious people use the term "soul". Psychologists use it too,
Not to mention musicians.
When they can isolate the "Bing" moment (the point at which neurological function gives rise to experiential phenomenon) then we can put down the idea of a soul entirely, not before.
No, we can put it down right now. No one has adequately defined "soul," so there is no reason to believe one exists. There is no "bing" moment (is that a technical term?). The differentiation of our experience from our physical bodies is an illusion.
Just because you perceive something to be so doesn't mean that is the way it is. If you think the mind, soul, and body are differentiable, provide some evidence.
The study they're summarizing in the article seems to be this one: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/1164685
Yes, a couple of grams. Of the exhaled air...
Yeah, kind of like when you take a photo. After a little while, the eyes start drying out too, removing any sparks left.
Now hold on there, sheriff. There's no way to prove that they didn't have the information long before they told you. Hoaxes like that gain the involved lots of publicity and possibly money. Don't you think some people are willing to do it?
If you want to see, you will see.
believing in no afterlife were you would be judged gives you a nice feeling of freedom - while religious people usually try to avoid a lot of things since they want to reach heaven (*snip*), I act on my own moral criterias without any pressure
For a long while I've thought that, while it takes a large amount of moral stamina to live by most religious codes, it takes as much if not more to realize that the responsibility for determining what's good and what's evil lies squarely on your own shoulders, and still do the right thing
Sounds like a great idea for an annoyingly cute TV series.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Even if they stretched first they'd have to be able to balance rather than just know the actual techniques. Someone else's "muscle memories" of how to balance properly while performing a technique will likely be different from the ones you need, if your weight distribution is different.
which is totally what she said
it's all about bus speed.
Keep it over 50 mph, right?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Or a Torchwood episode...
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
I think that for some people the 'soul' theory is the reason they trust religion, not the other way around. You'll have to agree that it is a bit depressing knowing for certain that your existence is just the few years you spend 'alive' and after that it's all gone. And for some, it's too depressing. Humans need to know they'll live on somehow, that their lives have some meaning. And if you're not famous enough to hope for historical eternal life, than soul is what you have left.
I can see another reason why people might have started to believe in the soul: seeing the dead body of a loved one.
I saw my grandfather's body a few minutes after he died, and something felt wrong about it. The first thought that crossed my mind was: "This isn't my granddad anymore, it's just cooling meat." It really felt like there was something missing from the body.
Now, I know full well that what gave me that impression was that all the little subliminal clues that tell you someone is alive were gone, but I can understand how someone could believe some intangible part of the person had left the body.
I know this may not be the best spot in the thread for this, but...
Why does it matter if some people choose to believe in a soul? Do you have "religious wingnuts" crawling up your ass all day about converting, thus the bitterness towards their faith?
Every time a topic like this comes up a flood of "sound thinkers" appears, attempting to wash the "believers" off the internet.
Seriously, why does it matter to (collective) you? And do you ever stop to think your attempts at rationalization are as annoying to them as their proselytizing is to you?
Do these concepts of faith and science need to be mutually exclusive?
Peace,
karma-that-fears-not-the-mod
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
For me, it's not depressing at all.
I didn't come into existence until 1986. For billions of years, I wasn't the least bit upset about it.
In other words, if "life" after death is the same as "life" before life, then there is little I have to worry about.
South Korea's also got Seoul.
If people treated concepts other that that of a soul with your method, those concepts would never be explored.
The thrill of chasing the abstract is a driving force behind much discovery and innovation.
Please do not discount existence because of the lack of an adequate conceptual definition. Perhaps the concept of the soul is the best definition to-date and is awaiting its next evolution.
Phenomena exist independently of their definition. Fantasies fail to exist (physically) independently of their definitions.
don't forget podiatrists.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I once heard a bit on the rise of science against religion. The crux of the argument was that science should be viewed and approached with an eye more toward humanism.
In the Dark Ages, God was viewed as someone who controlled everything. If something bad happened, there was a reason. If something good happened, there was a reason. Priests where the ones who understood that pattern, and each of us had a friend looking down benevolently (overall) to take care of us.
The rise of science began to make the world a hostile, unpredictable place. Of course, science must studied, information gathered, and one day man could make sense of his (now inscrutable) destiny and place in the universe.
I believe the argument went that this shift in thinking, from having a plan to not having any has caused a lot of strife. Of course, we're more rational (some of us) but this does not change the fact that we often feel alone and insignificant, whirling through the ether.
The solution was to try and find a way to help people view science as less about cold calculation, but more as a friend, a helpful and predictable Cosmic Hand that doesn't flip us off, but rather is working behind the scenes, as God once did, to keep everything working in The Bigger Plan.
-
In that sense, is a soul nothing more than a spectator? Could there be multiple souls to a body? Could there similarly be no souls to a body? Is there any perceivable difference between having no souls, a single soul, or multiple souls to a body?
not that kind of bus. cry :*|
Balderdash!
Why does it matter if some people choose to believe in a soul? Do you have "religious wingnuts" crawling up your ass all day about converting, thus the bitterness towards their faith?
Are you kidding? Have you not been watching the Republican National Convention this week? If you don't actually live in the U.S., well, just walk a mile in my shoes, friend.
I agree that this story is not a good place for this thread, so I'll try to keep my response as short as possible.
Richard Dawkins (a very brilliant person, regardless of his beliefs) has a lot to say on the matter of why science and religion should not (in his opinion) be compatible. He considers himself a "militant atheist", and wishes more atheists would follow in his steps. Whether or not I considered myself an atheist, I would agree that atheists SHOULD listen to what he's saying. It's a very interesting talk, and unfortunately, very hard to watch if you are on the other side of his argument -- i.e. if you're religious. Of course, isn't that always the case? If you're pro-life, for example, isn't it extremely difficult to list to pro-choice arguments?
Anyway, just throwing that out for you to listen to and evaluate. I hope you find it interesting.
Cheers,
also-treading-the-karma-death-pit's-edges
You most certainly can study something without adequate definition, especially when the motivation of study is to achieve a better definition.
I think the conversation has shifted a bit, specifically the use and implication of "definition", and we need to clarify what we're talking about.
Our initial discussion was about the inadequate definition of the soul. I think your use of "definition" in your reply has taken on a new meaning. Here is how I interpreted your first sentence:
You said: "You cannot study something without an adequate definition."
I inferred: "You cannot study something if your study methodology is not clearly defined."
Which I mostly agree with. I would agree with it 100% if we inserted the word "effectively" after "something".
I disagree with your argument about science and belief justification. You might not see a reason to believe in that which can't (yet?) be called science, but that has no effect on the justification of belief.
I believe with much certainty that much of what we now consider science went through a period of time where it was sustained solely by belief and that the practitioners of those beliefs were persecuted/discounted, and later vindicated. (By the way, I'm not using "persecuted" to allude to any persecution related to religion.)
It's my opinion that science is the religion of many, but to be truly scientific one must maintain a significant detachment from preconceptions, conclusions and status quo. A better way to state this opinion might be: "Science as a religion states, 'This is the way the world is.' True science maintains, 'This is what we've come up with so far.'"
I think we both agree that legitimate methodology for the study of the soul remains unestablished. That does not negate (or prove) the existence of the soul.
Of course, just send me $1000 and I'll hook you up to my E-meter here . . .
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
If you're going to make objective assertions about reality without adequate justification, I'm going to pigeonhole you as someone who is capable of and willing to make objective assertions about reality without adequate justification. I don't suffer fools gladly. Even if you're only deceiving yourself, you're still creating a negative environment.
This stale approach to thinking and life has to be shouted down at every opportunity for the benefit of those whose minds are changed, and to improve the opportunities of people both young and old to thrive in an environment of intellectual integrity.
I've always found it sort of silly to tout the value of a moral code by how much self-flagellation or stamina that you have to evidence in order to follow it.
Whether a moral code is hard or not is irrelevant to whether it has value. It either has the desired effect in your life and in your world, or it doesn't.
Setting aside whether it is ever possible in all cases to be able to act on moral criteria without any pressure whatsoever, it is certainly no way to compare the relative value of two distinct moral codes.
There are those who believe that they should never have to feel guilt, pain or distress. That's a valid position to take, but when I see posts using that as a selling point for their morality, its like pointing out to a person running the hurdles that you had discovered that you reach the finish line faster and a lot less tired if you found a way to skip having to actually jump over the hurdles.
There are those who believe that their morality gains value from its difficulty. Then there are those who believe that there is no value in the difficulty itself, but that their goals will not be able to be attained without friction. Those sorts of individuals will look at a no hassle sort of lifestyle as simply a distraction that cannot represent a moral existence because the process cannot generate results consistent with their moral values.
Are you saying that when Lex Luthor and The Flash switched minds, they didn't swap cerebellum memories, which allowed Luthor access to The Flash's powers and denied The Flash use of them in Luthor's body?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
That's exactly how I see it as well. I think the posters above can only calmly reach their conclusions by not really internalizing the fact that they're going to die. I did, and I wish I never had, because it's hard to think calmly about death after you've made that logically emotional leap (i.e., when you "realize" that what you've been thinking about this whole time is actually "real"). That's why I only go to bed when I'm really, really tired. I get to thinking about it when lying in bed, and it will keep me up all night.
And, you're right, the eternal afterlife is only slightly better, at least in a finite universe of slowly increasing entropy...
Sucks to realize this is all real. I really envy (as much as slashdotters ridicule) people that can take comfort in religion on the matter. There's no prize at the end for realizing the awful truth, and at least they'll be happier, on average, than I'll be during my short (always too short!) life.
Total recall - why go on actual vacation when you just remember that you did?
Introducing Google Recall(tm pending), the search engine for your brain! With Google Recall you can catalog your memories and review them at a later time, or share them with your friends online!
EULA: By using Google Recall you grant Google a perpetual license to use your memories, and any Intellectual Property contained therein, in any way we see fit. We can tell you just read this EULA, therefore you have used the service, thus accepting these terms of service.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Sarah Forbes: Doesn't give you much comfort does it? Not believing in an afterlife.
Kurt Mendel: On the contrary, it gives me lots of comfort.
Sarah Forbes: How can the prospect of nonexistence be comforting?
Kurt Mendel: I look at it like this: before I came on stage, the Universe had been around for twelve billion years. All that time I was in a state of nonexistence, and it wasn't bad. Pretty comfortable as a matter of fact. I figure it'll be just as comfortable for the next twelve billion years.
Sarah Forbes: So all those people were wrong to believe in a higher power?
Kurt Mendel: [referring to the destroyed Earth] Look what good it did 'em.
-- Odyssey 5 "Pilot"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
and fishmongers.
I'm so excited I just made water in my pantaloons!
The first thing that came to mind(no pun intended) was that if a memory resides in a certain cerebral location, and all one would have to do to locate it is elicit that memory in a person, while scanning them, then one can conclude that once this has occurred, one could then go in and physically REMOVE the memory by destroying that particular location in the brain.
Maybe that was what Obi Wan was doing. He simply used telekinesis to destroy specific brain cells while rewriting in another location with verbal suggestion......"These are not the 'droids you are looking for......".