Posts tagged with ‘memory’
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If you had the power to erase memory, would you use it on yourself ? On other people ?
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How do you feel if I tell you that scientists in their labs are currently erasing rats’ memory ?
Your Say
To understand how memory works, how it is formed and gets stored in our brains, neuroscientists are developing new techniques to erase rats’ memories. At first glance, their work can look scary because it seems that for better or worse, our memories build our identity. As a consequence, we can’t help thinking about the implications of such research. Are we assisting in the birth of an Orwellian project? What if one day the techniques fell into the hands of a dangerous political party? What power could it give to the government? More than only accessing memories, they would penetrate into our brain, and manipulate our inner self and deep thoughts.
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Where do you think your memories get stored ? How do you think it works ?
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Todd Sacktor talking about the potential applications of the ZIP drug on humans
The molecules of memory
In the 1990’s, Todd Sacktor, neurologist and molecular biologist at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, discovered that PKmZeta, persistently expressed and found only in the brain, was the enzyme implicated in the formation of memory. “Basically, I guessed! But it was an educated guest,” he says. Inspired by one of his professors from Columbia University, Sacktor tested PKmZeta on hippocampus slices and it came out to be necessary and sufficient to the formation of memory. More than 15 years of work after, he proved that he was right in live animals. He erased some rats’ memory by inhibiting the role of that specific enzyme.
A Human Brain Bank
If you leave a piece of human brain at room temperature, and wait to see what happens…it will simply melt and disappear. Indeed, 80% of our brain is just made out of fat and water. That’s what Katerina Mancevska, the Assistant Director of Tissue Processing at the New-York Brain Bank explains
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Listen to Katerina Mancevska, explaining how they operate at the NY Brain Bank.
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Erasing memorya multimedia project about memory and the science of erasing it.
