Scientists can implant false memories in a laboratory mouse - SlashGear

This is not science fiction, this is science. What many thought was impossible after seeing films like Inception and categorized as science fiction is now science simply because a team of MIT neuroscientists have achieved, for the first time, insert a false memory in a mouse .

Just think about what this means, with artificially created predetermination has a memory and is implanted in the brain of a laboratory mouse. This mouse accepted this as his and concorde remember what he believed to be memory, acted accordingly.

false memory was that in an area of ??the room, the mouse had received electric shocks to the feet. It should be clear that this never happened, is a memory invented by laboratory and implanted in an animal. When moving the mouse to the area where he thought before was shocked, froze, a typical response of these mice to a fear , according to PopSci account .

Creating false memories

This study was created to better understand the creation of false memories, something that has proven humans are capable of believing, in which we believe we live in something that never really happened.

It happens to many people, if not all, when in fact what we believe is based on lots of memories or information that we have previously processed.

Determine how these memories have been formed could lead to finding a way to detect them. Perhaps we are far from what Inception poses, but the possibility that in a future not so far be able to create memories and insert them into our brain is completely creepy.

How did insert a false memory?

The researchers managed to create false memories through the optogenetics , as some of the mouse brain cells are sensitive to laser light. Manipulating these cells directly with laser in the hippocampus, one of the parts of the brain associated with memory and space management.

They put the mouse in a box in which the features were unique, with a form, odor and particular light in which nothing happened. In this case the called “Context”. Then moved the mouse to another box where again the conditions were different, the size and shape, smell and lighting were different, but the main difference was that this was a shock box this mouse. While in this “context B”, the mouse was stimulated by laser-associated cells “Context”, thus creating the false memory that in the first case the ground was electrified.

never received shock in the first box, the mouse knows differently, but have the memory that was getting there as he walked shock, something like a sum of place in “Context” + electricity feeling ” Context B “= electrified in” Context “.

Link: Researchers Successfully Implant False Memories Mice With (PopSci)
Photo: ressaure (Flickr)