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Researchers Tweak Mouse Neurons To Activate Specific Memories
An anonymous reader writes "According to new study published in Nature (abstract), MIT researchers have figured out how to trigger specific memories in rats by hitting certain neurons with a pulse of light. From the article: 'The researchers first identified a specific set of brain cells in the hippocampus that were active only when a mouse was learning about a new environment. They determined which genes were activated in those cells, and coupled them with the gene for channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), a light-activated protein used in optogenetics. ... The light-activated protein would only be expressed in the neurons involved in experiential learning — an ingenious way to allow for labeling of the physical network of neurons associated with a specific memory engram for a specific experience. Finally, the mice entered an environment and, after a few minutes of exploration, received a mild foot shock, learning to fear the particular environment in which the shock occurred. The brain cells activated during this fear conditioning became tagged with ChR2. Later, when exposed to triggering pulses of light in a completely different environment, the neurons involved in the fear memory switched on — and the mice quickly entered a defensive, immobile crouch.'"
Next up, a vacation without without going anywhere!
I got here through a series of tubes
Your best souvenirs are just a flash of light away. However, you have to accept to be lobotomized and have a laser trigger some cells in your brain, but this is just a detail!
:-)
I rather close my eyes and think about stuff that I can remember. I can even think about stuff that has not happened yet
Didn't RTFA, as usual.
Sorta makes me see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in a whole new light.
I said I want to go to maaahz!!!
We're not torturing him, we're just shining this light on him.
It's not our fault he's reliving having his arm torn off over and over.
Finally reproducing Lizardo's work I see...
Lenny was not at fault, it was some homeless guy petting you.
I'm sure there are countless politicians with a hard on just thinking about how to use this...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The protein structures behind memory are beginning to be understood:
(Discovery of mBDNF) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3747716.stm
(CaMKII association) http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/25/9170.abstract?sid=e8ce0965-4b50-4ee4-913b-16d422f25230
(RNA handling of the proteins) http://www.newswise.com/articles/making-memories-how-one-protein-does-it
We're now very close to understanding how memories form and are activated.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Later, when exposed to triggering pulses of light in a completely different environment, the neurons involved in the fear memory switched on — and the mice quickly entered a defensive, immobile crouch.
This does not sound convincing to me at all - there could be many reasons for the mouse to become defensive, one of the least likely of which is that a specific memory was triggered...
It would be very hard to say that they were re-experiencing that specific memory.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Next there will be weapons created that can literally immobilize you through fear. Funny, is this not exactly what the Scarecrow did in Batman?
Referring to the 17th-century French philosopher who wrote, "I think, therefore I am," Tonegawa says, "Rene Descartes didn't believe the mind can be studied as a natural science. He was wrong. This experimental method is the ultimate way of demonstrating that mind, like memory recall, is based on changes in matter."
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. The Mind-Body Problem isn't going down quite that easily.
This issue isn't whether the brain participates in mental phenomena (that's been clearly known since the first time a caveman hit another one in the head with a rock), but whether physical processes are sufficient in themselves to capture the range of capabilities of "mind". To support that, one would need to, on some level, show an equivalency of a broad set of mental abstraction to a set of brain processes. That is, basically, to be able to use the abstraction and the supposed brain mapping essentially interchangably for the purposes of description or logic.
Take, say, "freedom", as one of a broad range of "mental entities". It's insufficient to show, say, an EEG representation of a brain with an individual "thinking about freedom", and claim you've captured the content materially. Apart from the difficulties of teasing apart the concept itself from the feelings about it generated in his brain by the concept, his personal mental associations with it, associatable but not definitionally-equivalent memories, etc., which we cannot presently do on at minimum a technological level, there is a bigger issue here of whether this is even theoretically, or logically, possible--ever. Those neurochemical activities occurring when "contemplating freedom", even constraining ourselves to one particular individual, are -not- the same meaning and content as "freedom". If they were, we should be able to interchangeably say, "Ron Paul is for freedom" and "Ron Paul is for..." and hold up an EEG of test subject thinking about freedom, and have these two approaches be equivalent in content for all uses of the concept "freedom" in all contexts of discussion and logical inference. That is the criteria by which one could know they have fully and accurately mapped mental concepts to brain processes. In reality, this example fails right out of the gate, in that we would have, at best, the mapping for one or a few individuals (which, in the distinctions between the individual brains would break equivalence another way...), not something that could answer "point to a complete physical description of the concept 'freedom' as it exists in the world". Thinking of other possible examples of attempts to retain equivalence between the concept and the picture quickly make it clear claiming equivalence would be absurd, e.g. "Would you sacrifice that freedom for a million dollars?". Hence, they are not equivalent, and a physical mapping cannot be claimed for at least a broad class of this type of mental phenomena.
Really, this dilemma has been around for a couple thousand years in philosophy, and not because people didn't understand the brain was associated with mental processes, or had not investigated neurobiology to our current degree of breadth and specificity. The questions the Mind-Body Problem poses are not fundamentally technological and will not be solvable by that means, however headline-grabbing finding another thinking-or-feeling associated process may be for neuroscience. Quite simply--"is associated with", materially in the brain, is not equivalent to "is", conceptually in the mind.
Lest I be accused of worldview bias here, here's a good overview, presented, incidentally, by a Professor of Philosophy who is also quite vocally atheist. Further references from over the last 2000 years of Western Philosophy, forwarded from people of all manner of metaphysical presuppositions, can be googled at will.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Perhaps this can be used to extinguish the haunting memories of war veterans.
This is simply creepy. Yes, there are potentially wonderful applications. There are also potentially horrendous ones. This is creepy.