We Can Remember It for You Wholesale

March 10, 2015 1:39 PM

The Guardian: Researchers at CRNS in Paris have created artificial positive feelings in a mouse’s memory for first time during sleep, highlighting a possible new treatment for depression. In the study, positive feelings about a particular place were artificially written into the animal’s memory, which caused them to seek out that place in search of a reward when they woke up.

Nature Neuroscience: Explicit memory creation during sleep demonstrates a causal role of place cells in navigation. Hippocampal place cells assemblies are believed to support the cognitive map, and their reactivations during sleep are thought to be involved in spatial memory consolidation. By triggering intracranial rewarding stimulations by place cell spikes during sleep, we induced an explicit memory trace, leading to a goal-directed behavior toward the place field. This demonstrates that place cells' activity during sleep still conveys relevant spatial information and that this activity is functionally significant for navigation.

All you need to do is combine this with forgetting fearful memories (previously) and you should be all set.

posted by RedOrGreen (37 comments total)

I forsee no way a technology for programing $brain during sleep to cause $behavior upon waking could ever possibly go wrong.
posted by yeolcoatl at 1:43 PM on March 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

Can we invent faster than light travel soon so I can get the heck away from humanity? Because there's a lot of scary stuff in this future.

Cool, but scary.
posted by Zalzidrax at 1:45 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will take several erasures, some happy memories, and one mood organ, please.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 1:45 PM on March 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Nice little mousies now have squeaky clean brains, washing machine for human brains developed in 3..2..1..

You like me! No, you really do! Well you will when you wake up.
posted by localroger at 1:45 PM on March 10, 2015

Finally, after years of treating mice like crap, science has decided to do something nice for them

Thanks mice

Thice.
posted by The Whelk at 1:47 PM on March 10, 2015 [17 favorites]

Memories,
Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were'nt
posted by yoink at 1:48 PM on March 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yes, please.

/depressed
posted by Ratio at 1:48 PM on March 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

What Ratio said.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:49 PM on March 10, 2015

Did they correct for the fact that the mice were already happy they can't vomit?
posted by maxsparber at 1:53 PM on March 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

Okay, the question is did they get them to sneak into an empty building through a basement window, or look for a spider with an orange body and green legs building a web and laying an egg?
posted by alms at 1:56 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

mutters under her breath
posted by infini at 1:57 PM on March 10, 2015

Y'know, I should really give Morty an A in math...
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 2:02 PM on March 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Where do I sign up?
posted by tommasz at 2:02 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Syndicate: Persuadertron

Ringworld/Known Space: Tasp
posted by Ryvar at 2:04 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

So if you lick your partner's nipple at exactly the right moment when they're sleeping, you can cause them to take the trash out the next day. And/or drive to Winnipeg.
posted by XMLicious at 2:06 PM on March 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

Could this technology also end up as a cure for PTSD?
posted by jonp72 at 2:13 PM on March 10, 2015

*starts knitting barbed wire beanies*
posted by infini at 2:19 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ryvar
Blast from the past! The Persuadertron was pretty much my favorite (not-quite-a) weapon of all time. I tried to use it exclusively whenever possible.
posted by yeolcoatl at 2:19 PM on March 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have played Syndicate as well. A lot. OMG I'm old.
posted by infini at 2:20 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Explicit memory creation during sleep demonstrates a causal role of place cells in navigation"

Hippocampal place cells assemblies are believed to support the cognitive map, and their reactivations during sleep are thought to be involved in spatial memory consolidation. By triggering intracranial rewarding stimulations by place cell spikes during sleep, we induced an explicit memory trace, leading to a goal-directed behavior toward the place field. This demonstrates that place cells' activity during sleep still conveys relevant spatial information and that this activity is functionally significant for navigation.

Interesting. Going by the abstract, it sounds like the real news is in the last bit - the indication that place cells help consolidate spatial memory during sleep. That's what they were actually testing here. The direct positive reinforcement of a specific brain pattern was just an incidental means to an experimental end.
posted by Iridic at 2:27 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I woke up this morning with the distinct impression that something great will happen by the time I get to Phoenix.
posted by humanfont at 2:27 PM on March 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

You like me! buying this thing! No, you really do! Well you will when you wake up.

This has the potential do so much good. Helping depression, PTSD, stress--who knows what problems it will solve?

And I"m sure corporations are already thinking of how they can maximize that bottom line.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:30 PM on March 10, 2015

news like this makes me want to curl up and go to sleep ... so that I can stop being so scared about how such tech can be used to manipulate me.
posted by TheLittlePrince at 2:31 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Very interesting but anyone want to summarize the PDF which is behind the paywall for the rest of us?

Sorry, science apparently isn't a charity :(
posted by chrono_rabbit at 2:35 PM on March 10, 2015

All of this is perfectly above board, we're all about informed consent here... I'm sure you'll have no objections to signing the release once we're done.
posted by tigrrrlily at 3:41 PM on March 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Buyer beware.
posted by Oyéah at 4:31 PM on March 10, 2015

I have no memory but I must vomit.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:58 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Persuadertron

Yeah, my Syndicate strategy was always:
a) upgrade brains
b) gather huge mob
c) drop guns

I loved that game. Don't recall if I ever beat it. Now I wonder if that game has any issues with dropbox.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:06 PM on March 10, 2015

The advertisements are coming from inside the limbic system!

In a few years I wonder if I'll remember being happy about this because right now it scares me.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:25 PM on March 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Honey, do you remember when we fake fell in love?"

"Of course darling! I fake remember it like it was yesterday because we paid extra for the 'it will always seem like yesterday package'"

"Oh you!"
posted by bobdow at 8:52 PM on March 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Tahiti? It's a magical place.
posted by mmoncur at 9:31 PM on March 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

O Brave New World!
posted by ifjuly at 9:57 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?

Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
posted by traveler_ at 12:20 AM on March 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sub Total Recall. If they are talking about it, it is already going on.
posted by Oyéah at 9:35 AM on March 11, 2015

Brain Candy. This is the plot of the movie Brain Candy.

I'll go start the first happiness coma home.
posted by Theta States at 11:14 AM on March 11, 2015

Syndicate: Persuadertron

Syndicate is currently available for free through Origin.
posted by zamboni at 10:57 AM on March 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

zamboni I have two multi year research grant proposals due in the next 4 weeks. Go away.
posted by infini at 1:59 PM on March 12, 2015 [2 favorites]