To be perfectly honest, this story belong in Gizmodo more than Kotaku, but I can’t help but think of the possibilities of brain augmentation in gaming. Scientists at USC have created a memory card that can replicates the brain functions created by memories. And they can turn them on and off with the flick of a switch, reports PR Newswire.
Scientists managed to find a way to specifically restrict the ways in which rats convert short term memory to long term memory.
“Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget,” claimed Theodore Berger, one of the scientists involved in the experiment.
“The rats still showed that they knew ‘when you press left first, then press right next time, and vice-versa,’” Berger said. “And they still knew in general to press levers for water, but they could only remember whether they had pressed left or right for 5-10 seconds.”
Interestingly enough, the end step of this research is to create a memory prosthesis that helps stem the flow of Alzheimer’s.
Shouldn’t making Total Recall-style memory implants be the priority here?
USC: Restoring Memory, Repairing Damaged Brains [PR Newswire]
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