If you can get past the first quote, there are some things of tremendous scientific value going on here. With regard to the Matrix riff…this science news relates to SHORT term memory, not deep knowledge. In essence this is a sort of turbocharger for short term memory, and if ultimately adapted for human use, would be of profound service for Alzheimer’s patients and others who have problems with this sort of memory recall.
For those of you who will not be reading past the first quote, the “whoa, I know Kung-Fu!” stuff is still a long way off, if ever…
Scientists Create First Memory Expansion for Brain
http://gizmodo.com/5813821/scientists-create-first-memory-expansion-for-brain
Imagine you can insert a memory card in your brain and go all Keanu Wow, I know Jiu-Jitsu! Reeves. It’s actually not that far away: Scientists have created a chip that allows rats to instantly know things. It’s amazing.
Memory Microchip: No Longer Science Fiction
http://www.ghacks.net/2011/06/21/memory-microchip-no-longer-science-fiction
Since the days of Star Wars and Star Trek, we’ve dreamed of technological advances that would make us faster, stronger, and capable of doing more than ever before. Sure, we’re not quite at the point where we’re teleporting about or living in space “Jetson’s” style, but technology has made some impressive advancement, even in just the last twenty years. Now, it would seem, that Dr. Theodore Berger and his team of scientists at the University of South California’s Viterbi School of engineering have built a microchip that can actually make the wearer (thus far, rats) know things. It’s a chip that is inserted into their brains, almost Matrix style. Sounds pretty interesting, right?
What they’ve done is built a prosthetic chip that uses electrodes to expand and enhance the rat’s memory abilities. After studying chemical interactions that allow short-term learning and memorization they believed they had an idea how to make it work, and they’ve done it. The chip can receive and store neural signals. This allows rats to store what they learn in the devices and as a result, allows them to learn more and to remember it forever.
Dr. Bergers’s description of their success is exciting and, to be frank, maybe a little terrifying:
“Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget [...] these integrated experimental modeling studies show for the first time that with sufficient information about the neural coding of memories, a neural prosthesis capable of real-time identification and manipulation of the encoding process can restore and even enhance cognitive mnemonic processes.”The implication of such technology is simply staggering. Imagine what this could mean for people with learning disabilities. Think of what it would mean for people affected by Alzheimer’s. The series of experiments being conducted by Dr. Berger’s team are, in a paper, being called “A Cortical Neural Prosthesis for Restoring and Enhancing Memory.” Currently the trials are working on the next step of development, reproducing the same results in monkeys.
A First Step toward Prosthesis for Memory
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37873
The device, which consists of a tiny chip and a set of 32 electrodes, marries math and neuroscience. At its heart is an algorithm that deciphers and replicates the neural code that one layer of the brain sends to another. The function restored by the implant is limited—rats were able to remember which of two levers they had pressed. But its creators believe that a device on the same principle could one day be used to improve recall in people suffering from stroke, dementia, or other brain damage.
Wake Forest University neurophysiologist Samuel Deadwyler first trained the rats to press two different levers in succession. The animals learned to press one lever as it was presented to them and then, after a delay, remember which they’d pressed and choose the other one the second time around. While the rats performed the task, two sets of minute electrodes recorded the activity of individual neurons on the right and left sides of the hippocampus, an area of the brain that consolidates short-term memory by processing information as it passes through multiple layers. A set of 16 electrodes—eight on the right, eight on the left—monitored signals being sent from neurons in an area of the hippocampus called the CA3 layer, and another 16 monitored the processed signals received by neurons in the CA1 layer.
Together with Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, Deadwyler characterized the pattern of neural activity associated with a correct response—the pattern indicating the formation of a solid short-term memory. The researchers stimulated the nerves in the same pattern and retested the rats. This time, the animals made fewer mistakes and could remember which lever to press even after longer delays. When the researchers took it a step further, preventing memory formation with a nerve-blocking drug, they found that the rats could still "remember" which lever to press if they were stimulated with the neural impulse pattern.
"It’s an exciting demonstration of the capabilities that we have now, not of only reading neuronal activity of the brain but also manipulating it," says Charles Wilson, a neuroscientist and emeritus professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. "Hopefully, this could be clinically useful in the future."
