Scientists Give Flies False Memories

[MelT]

October 15th, 2009

Credit: Jon Sullivan
By directly manipulating the activity of individual neurons, scientists have given flies memories of a bad experience they never really had, according to a report in the October 16th issue of the journal Cell.

"Flies have the ability to learn, but the circuits that instruct memory formation were unknown," said Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford. "We were able to pin the essential component down to 12 cells. It's really remarkable resolution." Those dozen cells are sufficient to manage what is a difficult cognitive problem: learning to associate a particular odor with something bad, like an electric shock. In essence, these cells create memories that the fly then uses to avoid that odor.

To pinpoint the exact neurons responsible for this memory among thousands in the fly brain, the researchers used a clever technique they developed, called optogenetics, in which a simple flash of light is used to release caged-molecules present in selective neurons that then stimulate the activity of those neurons. An analogous situation, says Miesenböck, is if you wanted to send a message only to certain inhabitants of a city, you would give those you wanted to reach a radio tuned to the right frequency and send the message publicly, over the airwaves.

Miesenböck said his team made some educated guesses about the parts of the brain that would be important for the flies' learning task. From there, they were able to narrow it down through experimentation to the 12-neuron brain circuit. Remarkably, stimulating just these neurons gives the flies a memory of an unpleasant event that never occurred.

"We like to take seemingly lofty psychological phenomena and reduce them to mechanics, to see for example how the intelligence needed to adapt to a changing environment can be reduced to physical interactions between cells and molecules," he said. "The question is: how do you get intelligence from parts that are unintelligent?"

Using their approach to "write directly to memory," scientists can now obtain a level of evidence about brain function that was impossible before, Miesenböck emphasized. He notes that neuroscience for a long time depended primarily on recording neural activity and attempting to correlate it to perceptions, actions, and cognition.

"It's more powerful to seize control of the relevant brain circuits and produce these states directly," he says.

Miesenböck adds that the simple brain of a fly likely can tell us much about how more complex brains work. "As a general rule, biology tends to be conservative," he said. "It's rare that evolution 'invents' the same process several times." And, he says, even simple organisms may turn out to have a "surprisingly rich mental life."

[SleepyShoegazer]

Holy fuck.

We're screwed.

[Miklelottesen]

Why do scientists even try and make it possible to control memories? Eventually that machine might be used against themselfs in order to mask test results the government wouldn't want to see published. I know there's a big step from fly to man but I'm still kinda worried..

[halcyone]

Amazing.

[*ColtClassic*]

Imagine if this becomes a form of torture in the future, giving people bad memories that never existed. Or maybe it could even be used to help mental health patients or people with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

This is pretty crazy, maybe 'mind-uploading' really will become tomorrow's technology.

[sky dog]

This cab driver was telling me about this memory technology one time

[Peter Griffin]

or it could be used to make people that they don't like go insane

[Raoul Duke II]

Originally Posted by *ColtClassic*

Imagine if this becomes a form of torture in the future, giving people bad memories that never existed. Or maybe it could even be used to help mental health patients or people with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

This is pretty crazy, maybe 'mind-uploading' really will become tomorrow's technology.

I'm guessing, if anything, it would be an extremely clockwork orange scenario but even more effective.

[stoned_soldier]

Originally Posted by Peter Griffin

or it could be used to make people that they don't like go insane

i'm quite sure you have absolutely no handle on the causes of mental health issues.. ya, let's just "fix" society..

[*ColtClassic*]

Originally Posted by stoned_soldier

i'm quite sure you have absolutely no handle on the causes of mental health issues.. ya, let's just "fix" society..

. . . . did you read his post?




. . . yeah, like really read it?

[Michaelrdnr]

Originally Posted by SleepyShoegazer

Holy fuck.

We're screwed.

Exactly.

[Herbin Legend]

Nah were not screwed. Only time you'll be screwed is when they finally kill you. Until then...smoke blunts.

[GrapDutchDrizzy]

Cool cant wait

[taq]

We had a guy from that lab as a guest speaker in our college it was pretty interesting. From what I could gather the reason for doing it was to figure what part of the brain is responsible for memories and understand the brain more....not to control us

[420Haze]

Pretty cool. If this ever gets to humans it could really help people with problems like PTSD. Although seeing as we're humans we'll probably end up using it to torture or control people with it.