Neuroscientists Can Implant Fake Memories into your Brain

Neuroscientists of MIT can now implant fake memories into your brain and cure those with emotional problems such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which includes recollecting “unwanted memories”.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a technique to implant fake memories into the minds of laboratory rats.

Steven Ramirez, lead author of the study from MIT identified brain associated with particular remembrances and used a technique to alter the rat’s memory once it was separated.

In concept, this experiment could be recreated on human subject and have an identical success. Ramirez wants that this study would lay a base of future research that could become a treatment for psychologically disrupted individuals. Cure those with emotional problems such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which includes recollecting “unwanted memories”.

In the laboratory, Ramirez’ group used optogenetics which uses light to turn on or off brain cells with an optical fibers that is proven straight into the hippocampus (the area of the brain that controls the formation of new memories).

Using a virus to contaminate regions of the brain where those neurons in the hippocampus control producing new memories. This particular virus will change the neuron’s DNA framework to produce sensitivity to light, which allows scientists to control them with the use of the optical fibers light equipment.

According to the study: “Memories can be not reliable. We created a fake memory in mice by optogenetically adjusting memory engram–bearing cells in the hippocampus. Dentate Gyrus (DG) or CA1 neurons triggered by exposure with a particular perspective were marked with channelrhodopsin-2. These neurons were later optically reactivated during fear conditioning in a different perspective. The DG experimental group revealed improved freezing in the original perspective, in which a foot shock was never delivered. The recall of this false memory was context-specific, triggered identical downstream regions involved during natural fear memory recall, and was driving an effective worry reaction. Our data show that it is possible to produce an internally represented and behaviorally expressed fear memory with artificial means.”

Theoretically, the brain’s creation of real memories would be the same as fake ones. Further research would describe how to apply these results to already established memory manipulation techniques.

In 2009, researchers could show that false memories about childhood events that never occurred were just as significant as those memories of real events. Instead of thinking of our memory systems as videos equipment, researchers showed that this complex neural network could be manipulated, which poses a risk when how, an individual can recover from “forgotten” memories.

Elisa Hurley, professor of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, has postulated the ideas in the Hollywood film, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In which targeted memories are erased because the patients discovers them too painful to remember.

Hurley identifies that those identified with PTSD would be candidates for such manipulation. With the use of beta-blockers, patients could have their memories erased.

Hurley said: “Beta-blockers do not cause amnesia. Rather they make memories less stunning, specific and stimulating. They decrease the emotional impact when someone is recalling disturbing activities.”

Referencing a soldier, that would have murdered citizens or committed other egregious acts while serving in the Armed Forces. The use of such a technique would benefit “types of trauma including interpersonal violence, such as sexual violence, torture, combat stress, and genocide, emotional memories may play an important part in someone’s moral recovery.”

Hurley suggests, “dampening emotional reactions such as guilt, revulsion, and regret to someone’s participation in wrongdoing may challenge an appropriate knowing by the person of his or her ethical liability.”

In 2010, Hurley resolved the use of memory altering drugs used on active duty soldiers to counteract PTSD, which makes a random effect of having those covered up memories, reappear later.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) tried to relieve military of their undesirable memories of actions taken place during war with an experiment performed 3 years ago. That introduced the way for “the possibility of manipulating those mechanisms with drugs to improve behavior therapy for such conditions as posttraumatic stress disorder.”

Kate Farinholt, executive director of the mental health support and information group NAMI Maryland, mentioned that: “Erasing a memory and then everything bad built on that is an amazing idea, and I can see all kinds of potential. But deleting a memory, supposing it’s one memory, is a little scary. How do you remove a memory without removing a whole part of somebody's life, and is it best to do that, considering that people grow and learn from their experiences?”

The public views their memories as records of activities that occurred. There is no attribution to those memories are so intensely depended on may be manipulated with little external effort. They are linked just as fake memories are which can be controlled by doctored images proven to a topic.

Studies have proven the power of suggestion, regardless of how unlikely it is, can be enough to create a fake memory within the brain the topic considers took position in the near past.

In another study, doctored images of antiwar demonstrations taken from the 1989 Tiananmen scale demonstrations were made to appear more aggressive than the event. Researchers provided these images to members who changed their memories of the event to fit the images they were given.