DailyDirt: Making Memories

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Sometimes remembering things isn't as easy as we'd like, and sometimes it'd be nice to be able to conveniently forget some memories. Plenty of folks are researching how memory works, but it's still a pretty big mystery exactly how our brains store so much information -- and which information to forget. Here are just a few interesting links on making (and un-making) some memories.

• People with superior autobiographical memory can remember an amazing amount, but they're not savants, nor do they have photographic memories or use common memory tricks. Many of them also exhibit obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but researchers have only extensively studied about a dozen subjects with this ability so far. [url]
• Currently, implanting false memories in lab mice involves some combination of genetic engineering, boxes, electrical shocks, brain implants and drug injections, and these procedures aren't recommended for humans (yet). Ten points for re-writing that sentence as a Tom Swifty. [url]
• Erasing painful memories could be helpful for some people, but if reliable techniques are developed to make people forget certain events, what would people choose to remove? Therapeutic forgetting has some obvious benefits, but there could be unintended consequences for criminal trials and witness testimonies. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: brain, lab mice, memory, mind, superior autobiographical memory, therapeutic forgetting