Learning, Memories, and How They Can Change

With the knowledge of engrams and the ways in which the brain holds on to specific memories being as advanced as it is today, the next step in studying memory naturally falls to our ability to modify it.  With that in mind, Steve Ramirez and partner Xu Liu of MIT decided to begin using mice to see how well they could change fear behavior by effecting the brain using optogenetics.  They found that through using optogenetics to stimulate areas of the brain associated with good memories, they were able to either suppress or replace the bad memories that they had previously developed during training.  While it is unclear whether or not the testing actually replaced the memories or just masked them, the signs are there that manipulating parts of the brain associated with good feelings and memories could possibly be used to edit or remove the parts of the brain that have developed engrams for bad memories.

An interesting off-shoot of altering positive and negative memories may be connected to the talk given by Melissa Hebscher and her involvement in the study of cross frequency coupling.  Using CFC has shown signs that it can subjects learn tasks and help to retain that knowledge over longer periods of time.  The application of memory altering, combined with these findings, may show some promising research in the future for altering bad memories of learning, such as a traumatic event a child experienced in a sports game, and promoting positive memories such as succeeding in that same sport.  This may help people in other tasks as well by promoting positive memories of things associated with that task while suppressing negative ones.  CFC may also be used simultaneously to increase efficacy.  This is all speculative, but the link between the two results is interesting.

The major hurdle to this, besides of course the technology being created to make it available for human testing, is whether or not it should be done in the first place.  Ramirez and Liu both agree that the technology is decades away, but also say that the likelihood that it will be considered ethical to use in the first place is very low.  Doing something of this magnitude to a person’s memories could change the person drastically and should be considered at great length before it is done.  And with the growing sentiment that people are what they experience, it is unlikely that this technology will be supported as a moral option to treat the effects of traumatic memories.

References:

Gibbens, S. Published 13 July, 2018. Memories Can Be Altered in Mice. Are Humans Next? “National Geographic.” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/07/news-memory-manipulation-research-neuroscience/.

Canolty, R.T., Knight, R.T. 2010. The functional role of cross-frequencycoupling. “Trends in Cognitive Sciences.”