Turning Memories On/Off With the Flip of a Switch

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Turning Memories On/Off With the Flip of a Switch

Posted by samzenpus on Monday June 20, 2011 @12:04AM from the mice-in-black dept.

cylonlover writes "Using electrical probes embedded into the brains of rats, scientists have managed to replicate the brain function associated with long-term behavior and found a way to literally turn memories on and off with the flip of a switch. The scientists hope their research will eventually lead to a neural prosthesis to help people suffering Alzheimer's disease, the effects of stroke or other brain injury to recover long-term memory capability."

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Re:Nice pretext by zwei2stein · 2011-06-20 00:14 · Score: 2

but you end up getting nice Paycheck ...or not.

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Re:Erasure by Culture20 · 2011-06-20 00:19 · Score: 3, Funny

Was anyone else's immediate thought ERASING memories rather than preserving them?
Yes, in fact it was used on samzenpus: http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/06/17/2058214/Researchers-Design-Memory-Strengthening-Implant
In all seriousness by sqrt(2) · 2011-06-20 00:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'd be interested to know how this could be applied to turning off traumatic or unpleasant memories, and the socio-psycholigical effects such widespread use would have. Aren't there memories we all have that we have thought it would be better to forget? Disregarding the use by governments for a second, let's contemplate how it could be used by an individual to shape their own consciousness. You could remove the images of your battle buddies being killed in combat, or your parents being killed in that car accident you survived. As a hack to short circuit the processing and digestion of unpleasant memories, this is an interesting (although perhaps disturbing and dangerous) technology, but it could be found that the negative effects could be mitigated with a combination of memory forgetting treatment and therapy.

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1. Re:In all seriousness by gatkinso · 2011-06-20 00:35 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The producers of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind called. They want their plot back.
  
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2. Re:In all seriousness by Abstrackt · 2011-06-20 01:57 · Score: 2
  
  It has casual uses too - imagine being able to forget all of your favourite books/games/films and being able to re-live them again as if for the first time.
  My music, movie, and book collections probably aren't as good as they look through the nostalgia filter but half the fun is and was imagining different scenarios based on what I was given in those mediums; erasing all that and starting over from scratch doesn't really appeal to me. Honestly, I probably wouldn't erase the bad stuff either because knowing what you don't like is just as important as knowing what you do like.
  
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  They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Re:Self Inflicted by taiwanjohn · 2011-06-20 02:07 · Score: 2

Maybe the /. editors had the same problem, which is why they forgot that this story already ran a few days ago.

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