This suddenly allows us to watch a memory been recorded and stored as
it happens and before it is acted on to be set up in short term
memory or into long term memory. We even have a sense of how the
brain tells time or at least experiences the time decay of memory.
Hell CMOS!
We have been tracking the slow and tortuous advances in our
understanding of brain functionality. At some point we will be able
to see information formed and recognized and ultimately deployed
through the brain. It will be an awesome process. Once well
understood, we will also understand how specific genetic modification
can augment that brain.
We certainly have strong indications that augmentation is practiced
among advanced space-faring societies but it could well be that we
are expected to do it all ourselves anyway. Evolution may have
produced the potential for augmentation but that took millions of
years. We will not.
Scientists Invent
Method to Create Memories in Brains
Jesus Diaz
I find this extremely
hard to believe, but according to new research published in Nature
Neuroscience, scientists have invented a method to induce memories in
brains for the first time in history.
Total Recall—here we
come.
The study—published
by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine's Professor of
Neurosciences and Physiology/Biophysics Ben Strowbridge, PhD, and
MD/PhD student Robert A. Hyde—shows a method to store different
types of short-term memories, which they have successfully tested in
brain tissue stored in vitro.
Titled "Mnemonic
Representations of Transient Stimuli and Temporal Sequences in Rodent
Hippocampus In Vitro", their paper describes how they used a
piece of mouse brain tissue to form the necessary circuits to record
a short-term declarative memory. This type of memory can be
something like names, places and events.
These neural
circuits—located in the hippocampus—retained the memory from
different stimuli for ten seconds. The researchers were able to
observe the recording of these artificial memories by tracing the
activity of the brain cells. According to Hyde, "the type of
activity we triggered in isolated brain sections was similar to what
other researchers have demonstrated in monkeys taught to perform
short-term memory tasks. Both types of memory-related activity
changes typically lasted for 5-10 seconds."
Uncanny. The rat brain
in vitro was even able to remember different sequences of events.
The objective of the
study is to better understand how short-term memories form in our
brains. According to Doctor Strowbridge, "this is the first time
anyone has found a way to store information over seconds about both
temporal sequences and stimulus patterns directly in brain tissue.
This paves the way for future research to identify the specific brain
circuits that allow us to form short-term memories." Their
research would also help in the fight against diseases like
Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.
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