What if I told you the way you perceive memories was about to change drastically? The ability to remember varies for everyone. Some people’s memories may be fragmented, while others’ are quite vivid and rich with detail. How exactly could we change what our brains have already stored? And are memories not just the psychological residue of what once was? Isn’t what we remember something that is merely out of our control?
Where science is currently taking us in its research pertaining to memory and just how flexible our brains can be, will disturb some and fascinate others. How would you perceive a world in which it is possible to create memories without you even being a part of them?
Memory creation by cortical stimulation is real, tested, and possible.
Specific artificial memories can easily be created by modifying brain cells in certain combinations. Researchers have explored this idea of memory creation through many different experiments and huge amounts of research.
One notable study from 2013 was conducted by researchers at University of California Irvine. Researchers played a certain tone for a group of rodents, stimulating the animals’ brains to release acetylcholine, a chemical associated with memory formation. The chemical was used to increase the number of brain cells familiar with the tone, creating memories of the tone. The memories of the tone were evident the following day, when the researchers played a variety of tones, and the mice reacted most clearly to the one associated with brain stimulation.
Similar studies have been conducted, adding to our knowledge of creating false memories.
Neuroscientists in France used a similar method to the UC Irvine researchers to implant memories in sleeping mice.
In 2015, one group of scientists used a method called “optogenetics” to label fearful memories in the brains of the rodents. The scientists then proceeded to switch the memories on and off, testing the animals’ reactions and discovering that the memories seemed to just disappear or reappear with the activation of certain labeled brain cells.
A second group of neuroscientists in this same study labeled the positive and negative emotional memories using optogenetics, then worked on converting positive memories into negative memories and negative into positive.
THESE EXPERIMENTS GAVE EVIDENCE THAT MEMORIES CAN BE IMPLANTED INTO AND EDITED IN SLEEPING ANIMALS, WHILE ALSO DEMONSTRATING HOW IMPORTANT SLEEP IS IN MANAGING MEMORIES.
Many advancements have been made, with researchers using similar techniques on humans to test their reactions to false memories. Recent research conducted by psychologists indicates that false memories can successfully be implanted into human minds with similar mind-stimulating technology.
In one recent study, the results showed that three-quarters of participants, after an experimental treatment, remembered details of a crime they did not commit.
Memory creation and manipulation is an interesting realm, one that sounds almost too bizarre to accept as real. Memories for many feel untouchable but clearly, we have more power over them than we previously thought.
Knowledge about creation of false memories could help psychologists and researchers recognize and eliminate false memories in patients, including self-created memories and imagined memories. By recognizing the way that both real and false memories are created and maintained, neuroscientists can make patients less predisposed to them and create better quality artificial memories in situations where memory manipulation is necessary.
Creating memories can also aid in improving conditions of learning disabilities through implanting sets of specific memories to target certain problems and input information into the brain, therefore aiding learning.
The potential for artificial memories and memory manipulation also exists in patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, and more.
To help people recover from these illnesses, positive memories can be implanted into minds while fearful or traumatic memories can just be “turned off”, helping patients to live more positive lives. The ethics surrounding this “memory management”, however, are questionable. Due to the fact that the memories are artificial and forced into minds, similar to genetically designing children or other artificial biological manipulations, many see operations like these as unnatural and unethical, because the operations interfere with how our minds and bodies would act naturally.
Safety can also be questioned. Doctors in charge of memory manipulation could theoretically implant whatever memories they desire into a patient, if there’s no regulation in place. These implanted memories could be very beneficial, but that is assuming that all goes as planned. Accidental implantation of negative memories or erasure of positive memories could also occur. Memory manipulation stirs much debate, whether there are more positives or negatives regarding it’s research and practice.
Regardless of its utility, the research is groundbreaking and fascinating, redefining science and psychology and forever altering the belief that we are powerless over the past.
2 responses to “What if memories could be erased, while others created?”
Interesting article!
I don’t think I would erase any memories. At first, I thought maybe erasing a sad or traumatic memory would be a good idea but then I realized our experiences build on one another and help shape us (although if I ever committed a crime or was the victim of a serious crime, maybe I would want that erased).
I think adding the memory of how I was able to create a massive amount of wealth would be a definite plus.
Would I know empathy without having known a certain amount of pain? To put it another way, would I know not to touch a hot stove if I hadn’t burned my hand as a child?
Making things, performing, coloring reality a bit… It’s miraculous, the way I feel afterwards, and I can honestly point to a desire for self-worth as one motivation for putting serious effort into visual art and music on my own time. In this sense, painful memories, insecurities and fear have informed any work of merit I’ve ever been involved with. If I deleted my painful memories, would my creative output continue? Assuming it did, would it possess the same emotional depth and flavor?
Whether or not the desire for a sense of personal value corrupts the nature of my ‘accomplishments’ somehow… it doesn’t really matter to me. The hardest part of painful experiences was – IME – the way they made me retreat, disconnect myself from others. The things I’ve pushed myself to learn have enabled me to connect with others in new (and old) ways, while the recollection of pain fuels empathy and a need to understand the emotional mechanics of people I care about. I don’t know if these side effects of my darkest days are things worth risking, or the extent to which those days have defined who I am.
One more thing – The ‘false memories’ of police interrogation victims who confessed despite their innocence have been studied in some detail. I found a short piece on this in the New Yorker a while back, and it’s online, too – http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/false-memory-crime
The article itself doesn’t go too deep, but if you dig a bit, you’ll find that false memories of crime in innocent minds are considered by many researchers to be a byproduct of what the [American] interrogation system is rooted in – a pseudo-psychological textbook on procedure written by a retired cop in something like… 1944 or thereabouts. I think it even has scripts and the like, but maybe that’s a false memory… In any case, the methods it describes are heavily reliant on wearing people down with fear, lies & false hope (the combination being most ‘effective’ when employed over days, during which the suspect is isolated). Shockingly, It’s still being taught to cadets and is used as the blueprint for police interrogation across America to this day.
I suppose I mention this because it makes me question the nature of my own memories in the immediate wake of trauma and self-imposed isolation. Perhaps I’ll never know how much of ‘me’ is really me, but at least I can be entertaining from time to time – No matter what you remember, anything you have achieved and held dear will function as a sort of mirror, or even as an anchor to reality.