A unique form of brain stimulation appears to boost people's ability to remember new information—by mimicking the way our brains create memories.
The "memory prosthesis," which involves inserting an electrode deep into the brain, also seems to work in people with memory disorders—and is even more effective in people who had poor memory to begin with, according to new research. In the future, more advanced versions of the memory prosthesis could help people with memory loss due to brain injuries or as a result of aging or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, say the researchers behind the work.
It works by copying what happens in the hippocampus—a seahorse-shaped region deep in the brain that plays a crucial role in memory. The brain structure not only helps us form short-term memories but also appears to direct memories to other regions for long-term storage.
[...] Song, Hampson, and their colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in July, hope that their memory prosthesis could one day be widely used to restore memory in people with memory disorders.
"Brain injury patients would be the first [candidates]," says Song. Such injuries tend to affect specific regions of the brain. Injuries to the hippocampus would be easier to target than degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, which tend to involve damage across many regions of the brain.
"It seems possible to me that one day we could replace a hippocampus with something else," says Jacobs. But he points out that it will be difficult to fully replicate a healthy hippocampus—the structure contains tens of millions of neurons. "It is a little hard to imagine how a handful of electrodes could be replacing the millions of neurons in the hippocampus," he says.
Journal Reference:
Brent M. Roeder, Mitchell R. Riley, Xiwei She, et al., Patterned Hippocampal Stimulation Facilitates Memory in Patients With a History of Head Impact and/or Brain Injury [open], Front. Hum. Neurosci., 25 July 2022. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.933401
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @05:24AM (4 children)
This is a baby-step towards that aspect of the "technological singularity"
in which we become hyper-intelligent immortal cyborgs, or machines
with no soul. IIRC this theme was explored in the Star Trek (original series)
in which they landed on a planet of beings who had replaced all their
original biological parts with fabricated parts, but crossed over some kind
of consciousness threshold without realizing it. IIRC, towards the end, one
of the beings proffered proof of his continuing existence by offering to
solve an equation, then realized the absurdity of that for a moment before
"crashing" somehow.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Lemurscat on Thursday September 08 2022, @05:58AM
No hope for the SoylentNews Editors. Wetware damage is too severe.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @06:32AM (1 child)
Yeah, Star Trek wasn't real. There is no such thing as a soul.
You are already a machine, you are just made out of messy wet chemicals.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday September 08 2022, @06:51AM
Talk for yourself, icky carbon bag of water!
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday September 08 2022, @10:39AM
Given that you couldn't show we have a soul now, you're not saying much.
And let's turn that around. The usual implication with this sort of assertion is that someone can retain their soul even if they're extremely brain damaged. Well, at worst, being a hyper-intelligent immortal cyborg is just more of that brain damage (well plus some body enhancements). That informs me that the soul doesn't go away any more than it would, if you were suffering from a severe case of Alzheimer's.
Funny how you can keep your soul, if your body and mind become broken and unable to work. But you lose your soul, if you try to fix or improve that. There's a phrase for that: sour grapes [enotes.com].
(Score: 1) by dwilson98052 on Thursday September 08 2022, @02:31PM (1 child)
...Borg.
Lower your shields and surrender your ships.
We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
Your culture will adapt to service us.
(Score: 2) by liar on Thursday September 08 2022, @03:51PM
“You see that city over there? That's where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing back and forth. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with all this - I want room service! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered, like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo.”
“I can carry nearly eighty gigs of data in my head.”
Noli nothis permittere te terere.