Science now able to rewrite memories

So far still in its early beginning stages, scientists have in fact managed to alter the memories of mice. Far from human testing this is still simply magnificent. Once this technology can actually be used it could on human patients it could help shed some insight and maybe even cure some horrible illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease, addiction to harmful substances such as illegal drugs, other things alike and Crippling depression or rewriting horribly traumatic events. While the amazing things that can maybe one day be done with this one cannot help but fantasies about some scenario in which ones memories could be viewed differently or even completely altered for some sake of an “evil organizations” will. The main reason why the article in The BostonGlobe or the ones in IEEE SPECTRUM have caught so much attention from random readers is because we all believe that the power to alter memories would inevitably be used on us humans for non-justifiable reasons whether war based or not.

But how exactly where scientists able to actually change a mice’s view on an emotion or change them all together? Well we have found out that emotions and memories are stored together and scientists have now been able to change that emotion pared with that memory. It have been long known that changing emotions with a memory could actually be possible but it was not until recently that we found out where exactly that can be done. One of the ways that memories were altered was because they were completely erased. In the study mice were made to fear a tone which would be followed by electric shocks and by inhaling a gas named xenon gas. This colorless and odorless gas was able to wipe out the mice’s fear of the tone after them inhaling it for an hour after the shocks to its leg.

Instead an experiment tested something different; instead of cutting out an entire memory they changed the mice’s view on it. So what the mice previously feared and ran from it now searched for and wanted to re feel or even the opposite. This experiment used something called Optogenetics which requires laser lights as well as genetic tweaking. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was using a specific tool that with a laser controlled neurons (a specific cell that transmits nerve impulses) that have been changed to respond to light. (A picture of the tool inside the mice just like it was during the experiment can be found below titled as Image 1.) A group of mice were subjected to electric shocks while another group of mice were placed in a room with mice of the opposite sex. Once placed in a small rectangular room the feelings where reactivated by the scientists. Those who were shocked ran around scared while those in the room with mice of the opposite sex simply lounged around. Then the mice who were shocked spend time with mice of the opposite sex while the other group of mice was sent to experience electronic shocks and during this experience the scientists triggered the emotions once more. In the end it turned out that the mice that previously ran away from the rectangular room now spent time within it while the other group did not. "The assumption here is that associations in the brain are formed between neurons that are active at the same time," stated one of the men holding the experiment during a press conference. "If this is right, we should be forcing neurons associated with fear . . . to link up with new neurons expressing the pleasure of spending time with a female." So the mice who were all shocked remembered it positively while those in the room with opposite gender mice remember that experience as unpleasant.

Image 1: one of the mice is depicted in this photograph with the wiring in place that the mice within the experiment were all subjected too.