Posts tagged with ‘memory’
Erasing Memory
In October of 2006, I interviewed Jonathan Whitlock, a post-doctorate associate at the Picower Institute at that time. On that day, he lighted up my fascination for memory, and its mechanisms in the human brain. At the end of the interview, he launched that he was erasing rats’ memory. And the whole story began.
The Discovery of LTP
The plasticity of the brain is its lifelong ability to reorganize neural pathways based on new experience. Imagine making an impression of a coin in a lump of clay. In order for the impression of the coin to appear in the clay, the shape of the clay changes as the coin is pressed into it. Similarly, the neural circuitry in the brain must reorganize in response to experience or sensory stimulation. Neurologists all agree that memories are formed in the hippocampus, a bean-shaped area of the brain, involved in learning. But the mechanism had been an assumption for more than three decades.
3 plays
Scientists know from experiments made in the 1950’s that the hippocampus plays a role in memory formation. Listen to Sam Cooke’s thoughts on that bean-shaped part of the brain.
An electrical stimulation to erase memory…
Two main questions drive scientists’ quest in understanding how memory get formed and stored in the brain: how does learning occur ? And how does memory last for several years or even a life-time?
In the 1970s’, scientists proposed an artificial model, the Long Term Potentiation, that would mimic the brain plasticity, its capacity to reorganize after new experiences. They realized that an electrical shock induced in a rabbit’s hippocampus last for just a second, but gave a long term change in the brain: the connections between the neurons got stronger. But is LTP really important, or are scientists just fooling themselves? Even though it is a very artificial thing, it is hoped that by studying it, it could reveal the mechanism of memory storage.
2 plays
Which animal to choose ?
Why do scientists use rats whether than other animals for their experiments?
credits flickr.com
Listen to Sam Cooke, researcher at the MIT Picower Institute.
Ethical Issues
While researchers are on their way to perhaps one day erase one specific memory, they are clearly aware that they’re working on a tool that can be used for good or evil. They would certainly hope that in the case of memory impairment, it would be used to help ease suffering, not to generate problems. When asked about any of their ethical concerns, some state that the purpose of Science is to test ideas and to generate new understanding ignoring whether it is good or bad. How it is applied then, is for the ethicists to decide.
- Page 2 of 2
- « Previous
Erasing memorya multimedia project about memory and the science of erasing it.
