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Scientists Erase Specific Memories In Mice
Ostracus writes "It sounds like science fiction, but scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely. After exposing mice to emotionally powerful stimuli, such as a mild shock to their paws, the scientists then observed how well or poorly the animals subsequently recalled the particular trauma as their brain's expression of CaMKII was manipulated up and down. When the brain was made to overproduce CaMKII at the exact moment the mouse was prodded to retrieve the traumatic memory, the memory wasn't just blocked, it appeared to be fully erased."
How long until ethically underfunded governments decided to "offer relief" from "dangerous memories" to their political detractors? Happy shiny people, indeed.
I 4 1 am welcomming our new selectively amnesiac rodent overloads.
Will code for new sig.
When do I get my own flashy-little-memory-messer-upper-thing?
[...]erase undesirable memories[...]
undesirable for whom? While this might positively applicaple for e.g. victims of rape there are tons of possible missuses which really should be feared.
being wiped by the cia, the nsa or homeland security, we've got the link to prove it.
ah, i feel vindicated. one of my paranoid thoughts is that people have their memories wiped of certain things they've done, knowing that science has reproduced it in mice means time travelers from the future could easily have been doing it for years now.
well, just as soon as the time machine gets proved to be possible. quantum physics is dangerously close to that with 'particles being everywhere all at once, until observed.' how can a quantum particle like a photon be everywhere all at once, until observed, unless time travel is also possible on the quantum level.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
has the ability to selectively forget anything inconvenient!
Smivs on the intertubes!
Screw that. I want to erase desirable memories from people's brains. Think how easy it would be to make office workers stay later when they can't remember any of the good stuff that happens when they leave the office?
Or for shits and giggles, how about removing all traces of memories of sex for the unwed father of a child? Would make the paternity suit industry tons of coin, I bet.
But enough of the super-villain type stuff.
How abvout erasing the memory of the first time you had warm apple pie? Then, you get to try it for the first time every night.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"But memory in a human is much more complex than a memory in a mouse," Verghese added. "So, this experimental model, while it brings to mind all sorts of possible applications, is many steps removed from any human application."
Imagine if they got this stuff working for humans. They could really erase a criminals memory of an event and all the stuff that makes him bad. Now say in order to preserve law and order you need to make sure the family of the victim he killed is "conditioned" to not take revenge.
Say you don't like people voting for Obama or McCain? Now you can erase certain things to sway people towards voting for you in the election.
Don't like what the whistle blower in your company is about to do even though you may be poisoning the local population by doing something less then ethical or just stealing from them with extra fees? Clean that whistle blowers whistle so he/she can't remember the facts.
Yeah this will be good down the road if they ever get it perfected for humans and especially in an easy to transport size.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Can anyone remind me what a brittlestar is?
Does anyone else find this scarily similar to how it worked in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
Also, it isn't "welcoming our new selectively amnesiac rodent overloads." It's "I for one am welcoming our memory-erasing government sponsored scientist overlords."
ah, i feel vindicated. one of my paranoid thoughts is that people have their memories wiped of certain things they've done
How do you know it hasn't already been done to you?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
All memory of Goatse could be erased! That has to count for SOMETHING.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
basicly you can get all information out of someone with this technique.
you "just" torture them to get the information and wipe their memories of the interogation and do whatever you want with the aquired information. you can even let the subject loose and observe some more, knowing what you've learned from interogating the subject.
I can finally forget all those times I got kicked in the balls.
ah but that's the thing, i lost about 6 months all told of memory.
the doctor wasn't really up on his paranoid schizophrenia, and he said that the memories were probably repressed. no, no they weren't they were gone completely.
the last time it happened i only lost 3 days, i was on a different medicine then though, and there are some files of what i said and did that are very weird. my explanation for what happened was hackers broke into my computer and used the wifi connection to directly control my thoughts. i don't bring that up to my doctor of course. wifi is everywhere, and hacked computers are a dime a dozen. which lead to my going all hard wired internet with hardened firewalls that are half-open and have specific configurations settings for each pc and each os that connects to the hardened firewalls, and oh i don't run my computers at night.
but the doctor just thinks i am a computer hypochondriac, in addition to being paranoid schizophrenic.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
What with humans being rather complex, mentally, Information may not be stored only once, or it could be fragmented.
The only way to selectively destroy memory would be to track down all instances of it, which I would say is pretty unlikely in the human brain. Same goes for most other primates.
Amnesiacs typically have a non uniform memory loss. Some things they can recall, but not others. Two people with identical brain damage can easily experience different levels of amnesia. Producing a reliable general method for memory deletion is almost certainly impossible.
Short term memory disruption, and the prevention of moving short term memories into long term memory is easier to achieve.
If you want to experience it, dislocate your elbow and go to hospital. They'll give you a nice pill, you'll scream while they manhandle your arm back into position, and five minutes later you won't remember any of it. I've not experienced it, but I've relocated a fair few arms. Its funny when the people wake up and ask when your going to start.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Scientist: "Here, mouse, have some cheese."
[Mouse eats cheese]
Scientist: "Right, now forget about it completely."
[Waits 5 minutes]
Scientist: "Say, mouse, how was that oak-smoked camembert with chive and onion?"
Mouse: "Chive?"
Scientist: "Wow, it works."
You do not want a vacation on mars. You want to stay here and keep doing Sharon Stone.
So soon we will have truly enforceable NDA's.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
...its the Haitian
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Nod and smile, nod and smile.
Because everyone's forgotten we were discussing this not too long ago. I specifically rememeber someone saying they wanted to erase their first sexual experience.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
... I call it Glenfiddich
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
I can already erase memories. It's called whiskey.
----
Squirrel
Maybe I am just grouchy but...
Even for traumatic memories, I would choose healing and closure over forgetfulness anytime. I may like it or not, but I am the sum of all the things I experienced, and I am not looking forward to self-amputation.
On the other hand, I understand that achieving healing and closure is a very inefficient process - just being able to erase unpleasant experiences would probably set us free to pursue more worthy achievements, like making the current global economic breakdown ever worse...
Again, sorry for ranting.
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
Brewers have been doing this for centuries.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
How long until terrorists attack by removing all one's memories except for Goatse? shudders
"THAT'S for making me come to Mars. You know how much I HATE this fucking planet."
I look forward to the removal of goatse, tubgirl and 2 Girls 1 Cup from my poor tortured mind.
This would be a waste on me. I couldn't remember anything for them to trace what to erase anyhow.
Heck, I can't even remember my login.
Just sayin. Clementine was farking hot.
This article has been posted every day this week, then deleted at the end of day!
What, you don't remember that? Hummm.....
"Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky--try to take over the world."
It will be interesting, to one day see if removal of a traumatic memory can help with psychological issues that may stem from it.
For example, can erasing war-time memories lessen PTSD, and to what extent? Or would said person simply exhibit the same symptoms and have no idea why?
http://www.local6.com/politics/17784129/detail.html
How long until lack of support for the Messiah becomes deadly?
Plus I can command people to do just about anything.
Mwahahaha time to take over the world.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
s/undesirable //g
Call it nature, call it whatever, but there exists already a mechanism that erases memories selectively, or moves them to the sub-conscience. Many times, things that we've seemingly forgotten resurface after many years. Painful as well as happy memories diminish over time. Isn't this a mechanism that is in place already? Who is to say that the individual can select better what he/she needs to remember or needs to forget? Most people would screw themselves up if given such a power. We don't understand the mind, psyche enough, leave alone sub-conscience and such.
Life is about being a Phoenix!
You are the scariest person I've ever encountered on Slashdot, that is an achievement beyond all other achievements.
After reading your posts I see why people would want the option to have traumatic memories erased.
I wish I could have this after seeing somethings on 4chan. What has seen CAN be unseen.
I can throw away these useless goggles.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
There are many memories that I would like to erase but I would like to also retain my memory of what it is I don't want to look at. What's the use of eradicating the distended anus from my mind if I go and innocently follow a goatse.cx link again? I'd rather it be like 2 girls 1 cup, I found out what that was before I ever clicked on it, thank Cthulhu.
Maybe we could implant a post-hypnotic warning in our brains, like when Gandalf tried to touch the One Ring and got the warning flash of evil in his brain? So if I mouse over to a link leading to 4chan I'll feel a cloud of evil pass over my mind and know not to click.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Radiolab recorded a good show that featured this work more than a year ago. Check it out:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08/segments/71872
five minutes on a cell phone..
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Scanning: "Where is the "+1 Really Scary" mod when you need it"
[Ministry of Truth Infosearch Webbot Alert]
1. Status: Online comment profile indicates political decent.
2. Reaction: Ministry of Love drugs appear to be ineffective.
3. ???
4. Newspeak: Your comment has been reported to the Thought Police and Room 101 is being prepared from your arrival.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Shock Therapy and Torture has a well known memory loss side effect.
See Dr Ewan Cameron.
This would be great, I could play my entire video game collection over again.
This experiment was checking the response that mice have to certain objects and environments which they have encountered in the past. We have no way of knowing how their memory was actually affected. The recall of events is different than the emotional response to situations caused by conditioning, and uses different parts of the brain. It's possible they can remember the event just fine but no longer associate pain or fear with it. Furthermore, at least with humans, they way we remember things is very strongly tied with the language portions of the brain, and we really don't know how similarly mice experience memory beyond simple conditioning.
Did anyone else first think it was about computers mouse?
My Windows is NOT slow, it's special!
It's the things that didn't happen which she spontaneously "remembers" that cause just as much trouble.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
All of this Men In Black talk is fun, but it misses another aspect of this research. Might this be the mechanism behind Alzheimers for example? Perhaps it will lead to a better understanding of normal memory function...
Not to quote Star Trek too much, but painful memories are just as important as happy ones. They help shape who we are, and removing those painful memories, probably diminish the happy ones we do have. "The sweet is never as sweet without the sour." We're slowly becoming a society that simply wants to take the easy way out. It just doesn't work that way. There are always consequences to our actions, 100% of the time.
Mind control and induced memory loss was part of a (now famous) CIA project apparently involving dozens of universities, called Project MK-ULTRA. See also William Sargant and Donald Cameron.
EPROM
"well, just as soon as the time machine gets proved to be possible" HUH??? Time machines already Oh.
Next they'll be blocking our powers too.
My other sig is extremely clever...
If overproduction of CaMKII is enough to stop mice remembering, does limiting the production have the opposite effect?
I've always had a terrible memory, stuff like this makes you wonder if it's just that my brain's running a mix of chemicals that impair that particular functionality.
Did they attempt to see if it still worked if the mice were wearing sunglasses?
"When the brain was made to overproduce CaMKII at the exact moment the mouse was prodded to retrieve the traumatic memory, the memory wasn't just blocked, it appeared to be fully erased." So we aren't really selectively erase memories, we're just blocking the ability to recall a specific memory at a specific time. I couldn't find any reference to this in the article...
I guess it's just a matter of time before this guy is standing in the unemployment line.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/05/confabulation-and-br.html Confabulation is the process, of creating and erasing our own fabricated memories, and we all do it; usually to make the memory more favorable to us. So called "eyewitness" testimony where people do the "can you show the court" the man who...? thing is wrong about half the time. The only solution is video cameras - EVERYWHERE.
(OK, not correct SQL, but it's funny! Funny, I tell you!)
...erase her memory of me not telling her that I loved her when she said it first? God, I'm a moron. Can it erase that too?
the doctor wasn't really up on his paranoid schizophrenia, and he said that the memories were probably repressed. no, no they weren't they were gone completely.
but the doctor just thinks i am a computer hypochondriac, in addition to being paranoid schizophrenic.
But what does he know? And why has he been living under my porch for the last six months?
Ok, we joke about it, recall (!?) "Total recall" or "Men in black"... but if this is or becomes truly possible for humans it would be unimaginably dangerous and frightening. Our memory IS us, much more than a foot, a leg or an eye. Removing it is indeed "crippling" in the worst way imaginable, and it is no consolation that the victim might not be aware after the deed of what happened. It is indeed abstractly equivalent to no less than murder.
The full journal article is available free from Neuron right now via ScienceDirect, for those who prefer to read what the study actually says versus what the popsci reporter decided to interpret it as.
"I defy the second law of thermodynamics."
"The hell you do. Get back in the box."
A beer or shot greatly dampens the emotional content of my memories formed under the influence. They are still there, but dont have the impact. Thats why I'm guarded about combing drinking and doing something important.
Perhaps that's why we are conditioned to view people with shifty eyes with mistrust. Perhaps they are self medicating their psyche after being involved with (or having done) things that they'd rather forget and humans evolved a way to detect this.
They did not erase anything. They PREVENTED.
What they prevented was an association of the memory for the event and the "trauma", which is pain. They tested for reactions associated with the pain. Some say there is no memory for pain, only for painful events. I disagree in that some people retain some memory of pain, and a few retain it well, while most retain memory of the event and have an association to an implicit (non-conscious) memory of pain. They managed to prevent more so what often doesn't happen anyway.
The only thing they *could* have tested was association to the pain. To test for the memory of the event they'd have had to ask the mice what they recalled. I'm pretty sure they didn't. Doing so would imply they expected the mice to answer.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I'd do it in a heartbeat. Memories that make you crawl into a little ball and cry on a pretty regular basis are the kinds of memories I would love to remove from my brain. I'd be sure to leave myself a note as to "be sure not to enter this kind of situation again, or else severe trauma will occur." As for what other posters may have suggested, whiskey does no good on getting rid of memories of years ago, at least not rapidly. I should know, I try regularly.
I know all those words but for the life of me can't figure what they are doing together in one sentence.
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
I used to be into BMX bike riding, I stress "used to". Anyway, one day at the track I was riding, went off a jump, lost control and came down on my face. I was wearing a helmet but NOT a full face helmet.
Anyway, I lost that day almost completely from my memory banks. I can't remember going to work or being in a bad mood there (apparently I was exceptionally grouchy... serves me right) I can't remember going to the track and most disturbing to me, I cannot remember the jump I did or what exactly went wrong. Some kids said they saw me and told my friend about it. They said when I went off the jump I lost my balance mid-air and started coming down wrong. I landed on my face and put my two front teeth through my upper lip, knocked myself out cold and actually wet myself (pissed my pants).
My girlfriend at the time came to the track and took me to the hospital where I got stitched up. So that day was like I said, almost completely wiped from my memory. Oh and incidentally, when asked at the ER what year it was, I was convinced it was 2002 when in fact it was 2003.
Anyway, just my antectodal story, and after that I rode again but my wheels were shot and I lost all courage to try and do jumps, etc. I still ride but it's *chill style* and the most I'll do is jump little curb cuts. What irritates me most about it is NOT remembering what exactly went wrong. Yes those kids telling my friend helped but losing my balance mid-air? Just never happened to me up till that point so it never sat well with my mind. Usually when you bail, you KNOW what you did or were doing wrong (in this activity anyway) but since I couldn't remember it I was never the same on the bike thereafter.
well you're lucky you caught me on an all nighter. usually my paranoid thoughts aren't on topic, so i go anonymous with them. and when i don't take my meds to stay up all night the paranoia flows easier and i'm more likely to post with this account. this morning i happened to be on topic and on an all nighter.
my blog explains why i was up all night. debugging kubuntu which is my primary net use OS.
windows is only for a games, and only when i don't have money to rent console games and have a decent console system.
although i'm +5 funny i seriously at times believe what i've posted and worse, it really depends how much weird shit has happened. you know, like the stock market plunging 5% but only on days i'm mad, and in a place where i've set up the computers on their security, while my home systems are turned off...
or like me making a mistake on my food stamps, despite the fact i keep every single receipt. i mean who expects their food stamps to suddenly arrive on the 27th of the previous month? when they normally go on the 14th? that's a big enough gap for a human to make the mistake, and think they have too much money. and waste their money on say coke products.
this actually happened to me, and the day i realized it had happened to me the stock market fell 500 points. i mean i know stuff about computers, a lot, but i don't do anything with that knowledge. working on computers gets really hard for me, especially debugging, but the ideas, some days they flow a mile a minute of what the capabilities of computers are.
if the world was just a model and there were lots of people like myself and you could say get them to post their ideas in a blog posted on the internet, and spot a gem from a mile a way... i mean administration would prevent you from reading memory just like on unix you cant' read someone else's memory... but what about dreams? would the system prevent you from dreaming someone elses dream? would the system stop you from posting information through a computer to a blog? would the system reward you with golden ideas and punish you with bad ones? these are questions i worry about when i'm not reading up on tech, news, politics(as long as it's not ads) the environment, or playing video games etc...
just so you know, i don't dream either. not usually i mean my mind does stuff when i sleep, but whatever it does, for all i know some famous writer or painter is getting the read and store dream my mind is working on.... because i've always had a problem writing stories and being creative on my own. but i still try once in a while, but i crave variety. i get bored thinking of the same things, except for a crack like addictions to real time strategy. i don't like to brag, but i'm level 25 on battle.net and know ever unit and every race, and i'm starting to know which units are really imbalanced and which are super weak... i still suck at figuring out what the other team is doing, but i'm pretty spot on on detecting bsers and i'm fairly good at telling when my team are rush/tech alternators with no communication skills (thus reducing the chances of winning my over 50%) btw i was a rush tech alternator for like 6 months before i learned real skill, but real skill gets weaker when you take a break from it, and i took a less stressful approach to gaming on battle.net the playing the odds, game, trying to figure out the odds of winning and which loser strat or which winning strat to play. if you do it right, the matching code makes your wins easier to predict, and thus less stress is there in games where careful strategy is required. close games drive a lot of gamers, i know it, but i have to calm down after a tight game where i had to adapt my units to theirs all game.
no karma bonus because this is really tangential.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Were they... Hatian scientists?
Just asking.
Heinlein described an approach to anesthesia which was to remove the memory of pain.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Time travel *is* possible on a quantum level, electrons do this all the time. Photons are 'beyond' time, time doesn't exist for a photon because it moves at the speed of light and everything is constant for it. Time travel is also possible on 'macro' level and involves time-space warping huge masses.
I remember reading a scifi story quite some time ago wherein they performed surgery under a field that would cause the patient to immediately forget what just happened. The idea was that anesthesia has detrimental effects, however, the human mind cannot survive the trauma of surgery without it. It seems to me that this specific test is directly applied to this function as you need to be under the influence of the CaMKII at the moment of trauma. Not really applicable to the beast you nailed in Jr. High. Of course I didn't read the article so I could be wrong.
I can remember the book but I think it was Heinlein, possibly _The Number of the Beast_ or one of the other Lazurus Long books.
I have plenty of memories that I would love to erase if I could. They don't make me "better" in any way--on the contrary, they negatively impact my day-to-day life. Sure, a shrink *might* help, after many years of therapy, but I'd still be stuck with the memories after that anyway.
And it's not completely true that the painful memories in any way make the happy memories better. Sometimes the bad memories just take away from the good memories too.
I think I'm mature enough to choose for myself which memories I'd like to get rid of. If the option ever becomes a reality, my vote will be for choice.
In his novel Night Walk. In it a government agent of a repressive theocracy uses it to torture one of his victims, asking him to recall happy moments from his life and then erasing them as they're recalled. After each erasure the victim knows that he's lost something precious and valuable but doesn't know what it was. It's an absolutely frightening scene and I for one hope that this technology doesn't work on any mammal more complex than a mouse.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Soon it'll be mandatory use in cinemas, wouldn't want you making an unauthorised copy of that movie in your brain now would we?
Your application for employment at Digicorp in an IT role has been successful.
Please sign the employment contract here, here and here.
Please note while you are working for us any experience / memories you have
while at work are legally ours and will be removed when your employment
terminates.
Congratulations! I enjoyed working with you the last time. It's a shame we will have to send
you on that IT course again.
I would gladly pay about 100 bucks to erase the memory of the time I woke up on the wrong side of the Island in Hawaii, in the back seat of an old ford taurus with a 300LB Samoan girl asking to me wack off so she could watch.
Perhaps after the shock, whenever one of the mice tries to recall the old memory, the memory of the shock is returned instead of the old memory? Since (AFAIK) memory-recall is based on weight, the new one (shock) may be more easily accessible than the old.
What do you people think about this idea?
Bad memories keep us from making the same mistakes.
I'd like to know how how they could tell the difference.
So they did something to the brain of the mouse and it didn't remember something subsequently.
Do they know what else the mouse didn't remember? No.
Do they understand this effect? No.
Hitting the mouse over the head with a rock might induce the same effect, is there a meaningful way to tell these two procedures apart? No.
Did they find a nice hook to get publicity for their research by talking of selectively removing distinct memories? Yes.
Would we be somewhat fuzzy-brained ourselves if we bought into this? Yes.
I already saw that in a movie.
I hear ya. I'm also paranoid schizophrenic, and my family will often complain about how I obsess over the computer. I also lost a big portion of my memory over a space of years when I was first diagnosed.
My biggest curiosity about this is whether a full model of memory can lead to memories being evoked and erased with sound or light. Some things I have been thinking are:
*evoking the memory and using a ising spin glass model (random connectivity) converted to a signal to erase our hebbian-wired brains
*relating two different fields of view/positions in auditory space with concentric circles for the amount of focus. Then, relating the focus over time and unraveling it. This may cancel it out like with the functions here: http://www.neiu.edu/~mrsabino/signal-commutativity.html.
Happy face + sad face = no memory. I think some of these signals also relate to losing/gaining a dimension, such as what happens to a world line near a singularity.
*using simulated annealing or some kind of optimization technique to find sequences of words, based on what the person has observed before, that block out the memory of the other words based on some new model.