/ News
Researchers Successfully Implant Mice With False Memories
Call it cool or just plain creepy: Memory researchers from U.S. and Japan have, for the first time, implanted false memories into a lab animal.
The researchers made mice believe that they had once received electrical shocks in their feet while sitting in a certain little chamber, even though that had never happened. Thereafter, whenever the researchers put the mice in that chamber, the mice would freeze up in a typical mouse response to fear.
It's already clear that people are able to form false memories. Think about that family tale about your getting sick at Disneyland—the one that's been told so often, you've felt yourself "remember" the event more and more over the years, even though you were way too young to truly recall it. Or, more seriously, think about how often eyewitness testimony fails, convicting people who are later exonerated through DNA testing.
"So this false memory is a serious social problem," Susumu Tonegawa, a biologist at MIT and the lead researcher in the new mouse study, tells Popular Science. (You may recognize Tonegawa's name because he won a Nobel Prize in 1987 for research into the immune system.) "False memory in a human," Tonegawa clarifies.
So what's the good of putting false memories in mice? Having a technique to do this could help other scientists study false memories more in depth, using mice, Tonegawa says. In the future, such studies could lead to a better understanding of how false memories form in people. Meanwhile, Tonegawa and his colleagues have already used their mice to discover one thing. On the molecular level, false memories in mice look a lot like real ones.
"They are really similar in terms of underlying mechanisms," he says. "So it's not surprising in humans when some of them insist false memories are true."
Other researchers previously created 10-second artificial memories in mouse brain cells grown in a test tube. Another team also made false hybrid memories in living mice. Tonegawa's team's research took another step forward by apparently creating a whole new memory of danger in a chamber where mice had never received shocks.
To make their fake mouse memories, Tonegawa and his team relied on two previous bits of research, one of them their own. The first was optogenetics, a way of tinkering with mouse genetics so that some of a mouse's brain cells are sensitive to laser light. The second was research Tonegawa's lab published in 2012, showing that they were able to use optogenetics to stimulate a packet of brain cells associated with one memory in mice.
This time, the team put mice in a chamber, very creatively named "Context A." You can also think of Context A as the Safe Room. Context A had a particular shape, smell and lighting. The researchers took note of what cells in the mice's brains were associated with exploring Context A.
Then they put the mice in different chamber, Context B, that had a different shape, smell and lighting. They gave the mice electric shocks in their feet while they were hanging out in Context B. (So Context B is the Danger Room.) At the same time, the researchers also used laser light to stimulate the brain cells associated with Context A, the Safe Room.
If you think this sounds like a recipe for some really messed up memories, you'd be right. Now, the mice would freeze in fear whenever researchers put them in Context A, even though they had never received shocks while in Context A. "The animal made a memory of something that did not actually happen," Tonegawa says. And it wasn't that the mice learned to fear chambers in general. When researchers put them in a new chamber, Context C, they didn't freeze.
The team also performed further experiments that showed that the formation of true and false memories both set off a series of molecular changes in the brain that are very similar. So false memories may feel indistinguishable from real ones.
Source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/researchers-successfully-implant-mice-false-memories
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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