This is a truly scary development – or a fascinating one, depending on your view

Sep 14, 2013 03:02 GMT  ·  By

There was a time when people took solace in the fact that their mind was their own, regardless of whatever else happened to them that didn't manage to kill them off.

Hypnotists always had something to say about that assertion, but they're few and far between, so they don't matter right now.

What does matter is that a group of Neurobiologists at UC Irvine (UCI) successfully altered the memory of a rat. To do that, they directly influenced the neurons.

In the first stage of the procedure demonstrated at the expense of rodents, the researchers played some test notes, then stimulated the nucleus basalis (thought to play a fundamental role in the formation of new memories), releasing acetylcholine (ACh).

That ACh emission is able to turn the tone into a memory.

And to go past the purely theoretical stage, the researchers played the song to the rodents. That way, they found out that they recognized the tune (the breathing rate spiked for all of them at the same time).

I can see the psychological usefulness here: a traumatic event can be erased if a shrink suggests it, for example. What I'm worried about is malicious paths.

In fact, if people perfect cloning too, they might figure out how to transfer memories from the original to the copy, leading to bizarre cases of identity theft/loss that we only see in movies.

On that note, maybe it's a good thing that it will take years for practical implementations to roll around, although patients with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease won't be that happy to have their potential cure synthesized.

The UC Irvine team found that the memory got stronger the more brain cells they tuned to the stimulus we described above. Presumably, erasing memories will work just as easily, which really puts us on edge.