February 16, 2024 • 50 mins
I wondered if it was possible to implant memories like in the movie Total Recall. So I talked to a neuroscientist to see how plausible it was.
Join me as Dr. Kristina Wright takes me on a deep dive into the science of fiction. At the end of the episode, Dr. Wright will rank the plausibility of memory implantation in Total Recall on a 1-5 scale from pure fiction- science fact.
#TotalRecall #MemoryManipulation #Neuroscience
Please support my new channel by subscribing, liking, sharing, and commenting if you want me to keep doing more episodes of your favorite sci-fi concepts with experts: https://www.youtube.com/@RealityCheck.Podcast
Comment and let me know what you think of this episode. Do you agree with Dr. Wright’s score at the end? What would you have added to this conversation?
Support: Let me know what episode you want to see in the future! You can also subscribe to my Patreon to help me get better equipment and bring you higher-quality episodes in the future. https://www.patreon.com/RealityCheck631
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Reality Check is hosted by Heidi Campo @Mrs.Heidi.Campo
Produced by Huw Drury @biteszhq
Instagram @RealityCheckTSOF
YouTube: @RealityCheckTSOF
www.heidicampo.com
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/campocscs/
Join me as Dr. Kristina Wright takes me on a deep dive into the science of fiction. At the end of the episode, Dr. Wright will rank the plausibility of memory implantation in Total Recall on a 1-5 scale from pure fiction- science fact.
#TotalRecall #MemoryManipulation #Neuroscience
Please support my new channel by subscribing, liking, sharing, and commenting if you want me to keep doing more episodes of your favorite sci-fi concepts with experts: https://www.youtube.com/@RealityCheck.Podcast
Comment and let me know what you think of this episode. Do you agree with Dr. Wright’s score at the end? What would you have added to this conversation?
Support: Let me know what episode you want to see in the future! You can also subscribe to my Patreon to help me get better equipment and bring you higher-quality episodes in the future. https://www.patreon.com/RealityCheck631
Connect
Reality Check is hosted by Heidi Campo @Mrs.Heidi.Campo
Produced by Huw Drury @biteszhq
Instagram @RealityCheckTSOF
YouTube: @RealityCheckTSOF
www.heidicampo.com
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/campocscs/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, everybody, welcome backto another episode of Reality Check the Science
of Fiction. And today we havedoctor Christina Wright with us here today,
and she is a neuroscientist by trainingwho received her PhD from Boston College and
specialized in the neurobiological basis of pathologicalfear, which to me is so fascinating
(00:24):
because fear is all whole science inand of itself. And today we're talking
about something that could be quite terrifyingfor a lot of people, which is
the movie Total Recall and the memoryimplantation that they used in the movie.
Paul, thanks, prepare for hypercrimeactivating activity. Just a gage tractor of
beluy, you're late for light speedlike speed, it's too slow? All
(00:45):
right, Reality Checks silliens. So, Christina, I don't know if you
got a chance to see Total Recallor read up on it, but tell
me just some of your initial thoughtswith the movie. Yeah, so,
I am going to be completely honestwith you. I did not have a
chance to watch the whole thing,So there there's my caveat right there.
(01:08):
However, I did listen to watchand read a few samaries, and I
think that it touches on a reallyinteresting topic, and it's timely in where
we are from a research standpoint andthink about whether or not this is something
that could be a reality, howfar we from this being fiction versus something
(01:30):
that could happen, What are thethe ethical implications, et cetera. I
think maybe the thing that stood outto me the most was the the at
the end, you still don't reallyknow what was real and what was fake.
But those were kind of my initialtakeaways. Yeah, no, and
it's I've watched both versions, theoriginal one with Arnold Schwarzenegger and then the
(01:53):
newer version, which I prefer theArnold version, even though he's like,
I feel so bad saying this.He's not the best actor, but it's
so eighties. It's so cheesy andgory and crass, and it's like there's
so many things they say in itthey're like, oh my gosh, they
would never say that now. Andthe seed well not even the CGI,
(02:15):
but the the prosthetics and the makeupis so angies. It's so over the
top. But I think one ofthe really terrifying concepts in this movie is
the fact that he doesn't know isthis a memory or is this not?
Is this real or is this not? So? I don't know if you
could speak to a little bit ofhow memories work. Yeah. Absolutely,
(02:42):
And before we get into that,I do want to encourage you to watch
it be documentary on Arnold Kursenegger's lifethat just came out not too long ago,
because it like goes over his progressionas an actor and it's fascinating.
Well, let's get small. Butback to the memory point. How do
you member work? Well, thereare like a billion different theories, and
(03:02):
by abilion, I mean there aremajor, probably like four major theories as
to how memories take root in thebrain and what their function is, how
they develop, what makes things stick, what makes things not stick? I
think the purpose is of this whatwe want to maybe zoom in on is
(03:23):
what makes memories different from reality?Is that what where we want to maybe
go first? Or well, Iguess I guess I would like to underscause
I don't actually understand how exactly memorieswork, and I've heard things that may
or may not be true. Forexample, I've heard that every time we
(03:44):
access the memory it degrades somehow.So I have you know, college one
oh one base level biology training,and I understand how neurons work, and
I think most people understand how neuronswork in the most basic sense, but
when it comes to actual memories,like what are they? Is it just
data stored in the brain? Isit a neuron itself? Is it code
(04:08):
within a neuron? What is amemory? Yeah, that's a great question.
Okay, So what you're speaking ofwhen you're referring to that degradation process
that can happen when you bring upa memory every time is part of the
theory of reconsolidation. So it's avery robust and reliable theory of kind of
(04:29):
how memory works. And essentially whatit refers to is once you have something
that gets stored in the brain asa memory, you have the ability to
pull it back up into the topof your mind and do something with it,
you know, bringing it into consciousnessis how we interact with thoughts that
we have stored over time and usethem to interact with our present environment.
And each time you bring it up, you have to remember that you have
(04:53):
other new information in your brain thatwasn't there when you filed it away previously.
So it's not necessarily that it's goingto degrade degrade every time, but
every time you resurface it, youhave the opportunity to edit it just a
little bit, because you're incorporating itwith a whole bunch of new thoughts and
information that weren't there previously. Sowhat that can do is, over time
(05:15):
cause you to edit that memory ina way that maybe you weren't planning to,
and it can actually become fundamentally differentthan the original one you stored however
many years ago. There is actuallyalso a piece that refers to you.
When you pull that memory up,it can actually get stronger each time.
(05:35):
Kind of a practice practice theory,if you will. You know, every
time you bring something up and youthink about it more, you're strengthening its
neural connection in your brain before filingit back away. So I wouldn't say
degradation is the necessarily the thing that'shappening. Just reframing is probably happening more
accurately, super interesting. So thatwould be a good explanation as to why
(06:00):
I might have a memory as achild playing with some toys. But I
don't remember if this is an actualmemory or if I remember it because I
saw it on a home video recordingand I've watched that recording so many times
that it reinforced the childhood memory exactly. And I think that that's one of
the biggest takeaways to keep in mindwhen it comes to memory, is that
(06:21):
it's not reality, it's not fact, and it is very much generated by
your brain and what you have goingon in your brain. So I think
it's really dangerous in a lot ofinstances to rely on your memory and really
feel like super certain that you knowthat's exactly how something happened, because it's
(06:43):
just that true. And that's whatmakes eyewitness testimony really challenging. But that's
sad conversation for many of you know, and I have heard that, like
there's there's the whole you know,what was the criminal wearing And someone's like,
he was wearing a blue shirt andhe was standing behind me, and
someone else is like, well itwas a she and she was wearing a
yellow shirt and she was standing infront of you. It's like their memories
(07:05):
are completely different. And that's justso fascinating that our different experiences can I
guess I like the word you said, edit, it can edit the memory
in the way that we recall it. So given that understand that surface level
understanding of how that works. Arewe are we able to like corrupt somebody's
(07:30):
memory of something by repeating it liketo them. Like if I'm telling a
story to a friend and I'm confidentlytelling them, no, you were wearing
a blue shirt. I promise youwould that start to change their memory of
the way they remembered a certain dayor event. I think it certainly could
if you. It depends on yourrelationship with that person. Right, if
(07:53):
some random person up the street istrying to convince you that they know of
something more about something than you do, you're far less likely to take them
seriously and take that into consideration andconsider you know, maybe I could have
been wrong. But if it's someoneyou trust and you admire or you look
up to and they're saying, ohno, you're absolutely inaccurate on that,
(08:16):
then yeah, that can lead youto reconsider whether or not your original interpretation
of the situation was correct and canlead you to change your mind and there
more change your memory. So whathappens to the old memory, because I'm
just thinking of it like file containers, does the old memory get stored further
back and it gets like overwritten,like it gets covered with the new memory
(08:39):
because it's still there. It's agreat question. So there are a few
different theories on this, and there'sstill quite a bit of work to be
done to determine exactly how these piecesare filed away in the brain and physically
where they manifest themselves. Like ifI were to look at the brain,
where is this memory, how isit laid out? Et cetera. Still
(09:01):
a lot of work to be donethere. But I would say probably the
easiest way to think about it isback to that editing principle, right,
so you can pull up that originalmemory, edit it a little bit,
add new information. Oh, thisguy or person that I really admire says
I'm wrong. I must be wrong. Let me change that, and then
tug it back away. I wouldsay, from a like real estate standpoint,
(09:24):
it would be highly impractical for usto store successive versions of separate overlapping
memories all over the brain because wewould run out of space eventually. So
it's probably more likely, given thatwe have a pretty efficient system, that
it would edit, rewrite, andthen put it back where it was.
Wow, that's absolutely insane to me. So on some level, there's bits
(09:46):
of our memory that do get takenand thrown out, vanishes into the ether
or whatnot to some level. Soyou know, cause it's like, I
hate to bring up a negative,but this is part of the science.
If somebody has a traumatic memory thatthe brain hides, that memory is still
(10:09):
in there, deep deep, deeptalks away. But when we block out
traumatic memories, they can get accessedlater in life. And that's something I've
always been curious about because I knowthat smell is a great way to access
memories. I smell something and Iremember when I was ten years old having
this magical experience. When it comesto accessing traumatic memories or hiding traumatic memories,
(10:37):
what do we know about that asfar as just the science of it
right now? What is our understanding? So that's a super great question and
super interesting to me. Definitely ahighlight of a highlight of my previous career.
So when you think about a traumaticmemory, for example, it's different
(11:00):
and a happy memory. It's differentthan a memory of like a to do
list that you have for or likea grocery shopping list, right that's something
that's a little bit more more mundane. So traumatic memories are more robust because
they are associated with really intense emotionalresponses. You wouldn't have the same type
(11:22):
of intensity associated with a grocery list, so you're more likely to forget that.
But when you when you think aboutlike the ability of a memory to
be recalled, the ones that aregoing to be more rope bust are therefore
more likely to be recalled later andrepressed memories are definitely a real thing,
(11:45):
and you could forget and not knowand have no conscious understanding of having a
memory, and then someday, however, many years down the road, you
get triggered in a particular way andhave that brought up into your consciousness.
Totally possible. Memories that are morelikely the last that long are more salient
because they either are associated with thereally strong emotion or they have like multi
(12:07):
modal information associated with them, Meaningyou have a certain sight that is triggered,
you have a certain smell that's triggered, maybe a sound, maybe an
emotion. The more facets and typesof information that come through your senses that
are aligned with that, and themore powerful they are, make that memory
(12:28):
more and more robust and more andmore likely to be triggered later on.
Fear or traumatic memories are one ofthe strongest things that we have, and
so therefore they are quite likely tobe triggered later on. Let me let
me pause and see if you haveany follow up questions there, because I
think i'm I've had to go downanother product. Well, so that has
(12:50):
to do with the mile in sheath, right. The milin sheath is like
sort of the integrity of the memory. And my understanding of that is the
mile and sheaf grows stronger, andI'll let you explain what that is,
but it grows stronger with two things, either repetition or something very intense that
was very strong to remember, eitherpositive or negative. So I think a
(13:13):
little point of clarification there. Themilin sheet is really critical for improving the
ability of a signal to get fromone neuron to another. Without the milin
sheath, a signal has to travelmuch more slowly, and so it's not
very efficient. And if a signaldoesn't get from one neuron to another quickly
(13:33):
and efficiently, that connection dies overtime because it's not like not getting plugged
in fast enough and powerful enough toactually charge something. So when you think
about the milin sheets, if we'rewe're looking at a neuron we have a
long axon that's a tail that connectsone neuron to another, and neurons communicate
(13:54):
with each other by sending electrical andchemical signals to communicate with each other all
over the brain and create these reallyfascinating and beautiful circuits. Mylon cheese are
like little booys that are all thatare along that axon. And so when
you put those little booies on thataxon, and I'm imagining like if you're
at one of those public swimming arenasoutside in a lake, you know,
(14:18):
like they have that rope that haslike those those little booies on it.
It's just like that, and fromthere you have an electrical signal that doesn't
need to go through every little pieceof that neuron axon anymore. It can
jump, so it makes it alot faster. So it goes boom boom
bom boom bom boom boom, andit's there instead of there are lested of
this. Just I had a vividreminder of b when I was an anatomy
(14:41):
class and he had us all goaround the karoom and clap, one student
at a time. Yeah, yeah, Like that's a poor it's like a
poor neuron connection. Having us eachclap one at a time, and then
he had us practice clapping every otherperson and it went faster, and then
Tam did every fifth person. Itwent even faster, and then we did
like every like fifteenth student clapped inthe signal went around the room in like
a couple seconds. So our thatwas my little lesson in anatomy. So
(15:05):
yeah, it's super interesting. Sothat sheath can be stronger or weaker,
and that's going to improve the signalof the neurons being able to talk to
each other and the quality of thememory. Not going to improve the quality
of the memory directly, but itis going to improve the ability of a
neuron to speak with another neuron anddevelop a stronger connection. And it's the
(15:30):
stronger connection between neurons that is thefoundation of a memory. So what I
mean by that is there's a wholeprinciple called neurons that fire together wire together.
If there's no firing, then thereare no connections in the brain because
the neurons aren't active. If theyare firing, but they're not firing like
(15:54):
in a way that they're connecting efficientlywith one one to another. Then if
connections are not super strong, they'llthey'll die, so it happens to a
dead neuron. And so unfortunately,if you die, if a neuron dies
because it's not being used, youwon't usually get that neuron back. So
(16:15):
we need to keep using our brainsas much as possible to maintain as many
of our neurons functioning throughout our lives. So constantly, learn, constantly,
like just try and exercise, takecare of your body, do whatever you
can to keep your brain healthy becauseit's the only one you get. Wow,
that's amazing. It's it's almost likeit really is kind of used or
(16:37):
lose it. Because I took myfirst major in college was American sign language,
and I took four years and Itry head it to like can I
sign my name? Thoughts about it, and it's like I have lost a
whole language. And I know thatthat's so many people's experience do so they're
dead. So if I wanted torelearn a language, it's not like it's
atrophied and I need to just strengthenit again. It's dead and I need
(16:59):
to rebuild it. So I knowI should step that back a little bit
sore. There is the possibility ofneurons dying for sure if they're not being
used. More likely in a healthybrain, those neurons have been recruited to
do some other type of a jobbecause they weren't being used for that original
job. But there is also thepossibility with like illicit drug use, maybe
(17:23):
not enough sleep, maybe not enoughdreaming, that your neurons can die and
then they're really really hard to hardto replace, and they probably won't be
replaced. And now I just wantto go down the rabbit hole of dreams.
Yeah, I'm going to try andstay good today and keep us on
topic. I didn't yet answer yoursecond question about the strength of the memory
(17:47):
and how that's how that's related toor not related to the mylin sheet,
so I just want to make surethat that's crystal clear. So the milin
sheet increases the ability of a neuronto effectively communicate with another neuron. But
the foundation of a memory is acluster of neurons firing together and strengthening that
connection over time, so that anytimeyou trigger that memory, a whole map
(18:11):
of neurons that are devoted to holdingonto that memory light up and activate for
you to experience that, and thenthey deactivate when you put it away,
so that here's here's an anecdote thatwe can speak to. Years ago.
I was in a minor motorcycle accident. I you know, super story.
(18:34):
I was. I was a newerwriter and I was driving in the springtime.
They salt the roads and they slidout on salt, and I just
had a minor accident. And thenback to back with that, I can't
remember which one came first. Iwas also in a ski accident, which
was a little bit more traumatic.I was not wearing a helmet. Wear
your helmet, kids wear your helmets, and dult ski in trees and I
hit my head pretty bad. Andever since I had those two accidents back
(18:57):
to back, I have been afraidof anything that's going beast. So if
I get on if I get ina car, and usually it's left hand
turns, if I'm in a powerat high speeds turning left, I get
scared. If I'm in an airplane, and I was never scared of airplanes
before, and we hit turbulence,it cut really bad. For a while.
I've been working on it, butI would be the person who was
(19:17):
just crying and I would be laughingto the person next to me, and
I'm like, I'm mean, thiswas going to happen, don't worry about
me. I'm just crying. I'mlike, my body's scared, but I'm
not. And I would talk abouthow I'm like, it's a physical fear.
I'm not actually scared of planes.I understand it's not going to crash.
But ever since that accident, itcreated that little fear cluster, and
I've just been fighting tooth and nailto not be scared of airplanes ever since.
(19:41):
Is that a correct assessment? Yeah? Absolutely, And I think what
you're really describing is a fear memorythat you created and was stored in your
brain. And although you've a dressedsome of like the conscious pieces right in
an attempt to overwrite this by understandand knowing that, like I'm in an
(20:02):
airplane, this is safe. LikeI can tell my friend that this is
probably going to happen, but likeI know that this is not how I
should respond. You've tried to combatit a little, but there are some
emotional responses that trigger physical responses,which is kind of similar to what you
would expect in post traumatic stress disorderor anxiety and fear disorders, where if
(20:26):
that brain pathway that was created andactivated and generated fear during that time when
you were experiencing these accidents in thistrauma, if it's triggered, it doesn't
matter what you think, it's justgoing to make your body do what it
thinks your body needs to do,which is express fear. And that was
(20:47):
actually part of my dissertation work wasfiguring out what part of your brain creates
this estimation of how much fear yourbody should produce to a given stimuli,
Like are there neurons that are responsiblefor doing the math and saying like this
is potentially scary, but I cansee that I'm safe and like this is
(21:07):
not a place where I really needto run and freak out or like or
what. And what I ended updiscovering is that there are literally neurons that
do that math and then tell youhow to behave and they are in the
fear part of the brain, orone of the parts that we think is
really important for fear. And whenyou have those neurons messing up their calculations,
(21:33):
that's when you can get over exaggeratedfear responses to things that really shouldn't
be that scary. Which is whatyou're describing. So it could be that
your estimation is just a little bitoff, and reasonably so, because you
experienced something really traumatic before and itwas real before, and so what's your
brain like, your brain is sittingthere being like, I know, you're
telling me that this isn't gonna happenagain, but I'm telling you that it's
(21:56):
already happened twice. That happens twice. That's about no more a motorcycle.
I'm still gonna ski just I'll keepit the blues and greens. Yeah,
but the hell so that so thebrain doing bad math could be a that's
that's kind of why we have totallyirrational fears, like things like phobias like
spiders and public speaking I think aretwo of the biggest fears. And public
(22:19):
speaking isn't you know, it's notdangerous, but people have such a fear
based on maybe a bad experience sociallybecause we have such high social equity.
That's interesting. So what about Imean, it sounds like there is some
(22:40):
science that we can kind of unpackon memory implantation, because it sounds like
we ourselves have the ability to overwriteour own memories to a degree, because
it's like, you know, wecan we can overwrite, you know,
something that's not scary to be scary, or we can overwrite something that's a
negative to become a positive, andwe it sounds like we're constantly doing this
already. What about artificially, arethere any artificial processes of false memories?
(23:07):
Or maybe not even artificial. I'mthinking of like you know in Total Recall,
where they hook him up to thegiant machine and zoop you have a
whole fake vacation, or now you'rea spy, So it's maybe not always
that machine. But what is thescientific understanding of implanted false or artificial memories?
That's a great question. So there'sactually a really cool ted talk from
(23:32):
Sea Ramirez Lab. Sever Ramirez isLab. He's based in Boston. It's
actually from like twenty thirteen. Thetitles like a Laser and a Mouse or
something like that. So I recommendto anybody who's interested in this topic,
but take a look at that video. But yeah, we do have the
ability to implant false memories, andI'll describe how that works. You'll maybe
(24:00):
a little bit disappointed because they're notas elaborate right now as a vacation in
Bali or wherever. But yes,we can manipulate memories for sure, and
we can implant false ones as well. And so to describe a little bit
of what they did, and wecan go into more detail if you want.
(24:22):
But they went into a mouse's brain, and this is some of that.
I use the same techniques in myin my work as well. They
went into a mouse's brain and theyhad a mouse experience fear by I believe
foot shock in this paradigm, butit could be mistaken. But let's say,
for argument's sake, we put amouse in a box, We shock
their foot, We make them afraidof this box. While doing that,
(24:45):
we put a probe in their brainthat allows us to see which neurons light
up when they become afraid. Andthe purpose of that probe and the purpose
of understanding which neurons light up whenthey're afraid, is now we know that
those neurons are involved in that thatfear of memory, right, and that
(25:07):
fear experience, and that fear ofmemory happening. So then what they did,
after they made sure that they knewthat this rat was afraid of this
box, they then moved this Iguess the mouse moved the mouse to a
new box and then using a lightwhich activates those same neurons. Talk more
about how that works. But youcan turn on a light and then activate
(25:30):
those same exact neurons that activated ina totally different environment where they express fear,
And you can make a rat afraidof a new environment and demonstrate a
fear memory in a totally new placethat they've never been before, just by
turning on the same neurons that wereresponsible for creating that memory in the first
place. So now you've created afalse memory because you've now made this mouse
(25:53):
afraid of something they have no businessbeing afraid of because they've never experienced it
before. And that's how that works. Wow, So I was the rot.
I was the rot I was.I had the ski accident, and
now I'm scared of airplanes, whichare not correlated because yes, my brain
took is. It was just highspeeds. Yes, what was scary to
(26:15):
me? And I don't recall theski accident. Actually I have no memory
of that day, but I couldonly assume that maybe the turbulence of the
skis during the crash was something thatwas scary that my brain locked onto and
all those specific neurons lit up,and then those same neurons are getting reinforced
on the airplane YEP. So Iwould say there's a slight difference, right,
(26:37):
because we don't know that we're activatingthe exact same memory for you when
you're on an airplane as when youwere in your accidents, whereas in the
experimental version we do know because we'vetagged and selected those neurons specifically and then
lit them back up in a totallynew place with yours. You could also
(26:59):
being something called fear transfer, right, So you've experienced fear in this first
environment, and then you've now foundyourself in an environment that has some of
the same characteristics, which has allowedyou to read bring that past memory up
in that past fear experience and fearresponse up into your present consciousness, and
(27:22):
then you've now applied it over multipletimes of doing that in iterations thinking to
this new environment. So you mayhave actively done that, not consciously,
but you may have actively transferred yourfear from one place to another because it
was so profouned for you. Sowhen we're implanting these memories, have we
(27:47):
gone beyond mice or is that wherethe research has stopped. So I would
say there's probably a chance that there'sbeen a more recent experiment in a monkey
that's happened, and from a humanstandpoint, I don't know what the latest
research is from the animal primate area, but I would imagine since that happened
(28:07):
in twenty thirteen that they have probablygone as far as a monkey. From
the human standpoint, we've talked aboutthe idea of editing memories in situations such
as like post traumatic stress disorder,where it would be really freaking helpful if
we didn't only have to rely ontalk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to try
(28:30):
and overcome with consciousness these really robustcorresponses. So at one point there was
a proposition and a bit of experimentationthat was being done to see if maybe
ketamine, a specific lower dose ofketamine could be administered timely, like very
shortly after a traumatic experience occurred andwhile that memory was being created and stored.
(28:55):
If you if you were to injectketamine when that person was not quite
yet fully formed that memory, like, can we interrupt the can we interrupt
the consolidation of this experience and preventit from being as strong as it may
be to create PTSD, maybe inpeople who are predisposed to PTSD just because
(29:15):
they have a lot of family membersor something like that who have experienced similar
tendencies. So there has been somediscussion about, like can we use drugs
to interrupt memories and prevent them frombeing so profound? But then we get
into this question of ethics, right, like how far can we really go?
What is like? What is ethical? Who can be in charge?
(29:40):
Is it? Is it okay toedit someone's memories? You of course hope
that people would want to do itfor good or maybe to inject happy memories,
But there's also the converse possibility thatsomeone tries to do something that's more
in line with the film, rightand delete someone's identity or delete a memory
that's really critical to who they areas a person or or or whatnot.
(30:03):
I can't think of anything. Soit sounds like we can edit memories a
few different ways. The first onewas just environmental, which is kind of
the natural way that we edit ourmemories already, everyone's doing that every single
day. And the second one wasthe example of the mouse, which would
be an electrical edit of the memories. And then the third one you talked
about is a chemical edit of thememories in all three or successful and the
(30:27):
you know, the second two orexperience fields that we're exploring a little bit
more. Are there any other potentialways that we could edit memories? I
can't think of any at this moment. I would say, like some sort
of mechanical like interference, right,some sort of implant or like electronic Yeah,
(30:56):
I know, it would still comedown to electronic or chemical, because
that's exactly that's what we are biologicalfeatures. So that really kind of gets
me thinking about reality and consciousness becauseif we can't even trust our own memories
to provide us the accurate recollection ofwhat happened, I think it kind of
(31:19):
brings into question kind of the challengeof what defines consciousness and how our memory
can define one's self because I havean identity that's built on all of my
memories. Yeah, if I can'ttrust those memories, how can I trust
my identity? So how from aneuroscience perspective, how can we define identity?
(31:45):
Yeah? I love your questions,This is great, Okay, So
your identity and also your perception ofthe world that you live in and what's
real and what's not I actually liketo think of and this is maybe a
little bit controversial as just like acommunal hallucination, oh man, because it
(32:07):
is your what you have in yourbrain and how you experience the world is
all based up on based upon whatyou perceived, and what you perceive is
completely based upon what you pay attentionto. So if you whatever you pay
attention to becomes a part of yourlittle world, and then your little world,
(32:30):
along with everybody else's world, ispaying attention to a whole flew of
things, and usually they're pretty muchin line with one another. And so
we've developed, we've developed this ideaof reality and come up with customs that
we think are appropriate and not appropriate, and created all these little rules.
But it's really just in agreed uponstate. Don't we don't know what a
(32:54):
real one? Is? So fascinatingbecause we have these equips that we use
in everyday language, it's like,oh, they're living in their own reality,
and it's like they truly are.If that person is taking in a
completely different set of sensory information thanyou are. And I'm not even talking
about clinically schizophrenic people someone living intheir own little world. Their reality is
(33:16):
truly different than yours, exactly,and you can't repute it because it is.
It fundamentally is. And I thinkthat that's where it's really important for
me to help people develop more compassionto people who do experience hallucination, such
as right, people who have schizophreniaor experience some sort of delusion and an
(33:40):
inability to understand the reality that weare. It's just that their inputs are
different. Their perception of the worldis different. Their brain isn't set up
to see and observe and understand thingsin the way that ours is, and
so of course they're going to comeup with a different result. And that
is the reality period. Well.And even excuse me, even looking at
(34:07):
humans versus animals, because animals aregoing to take in a completely different set
of sensory information as well. SoI mean, this is kind of like
breaking my brain right now. Sorryaudience, tell you guys listening this,
I hope we all have some timeto decompress after this and absorb this podcast.
But like you know, my dog'sreality is highly based on scent sensory,
(34:30):
so his world looks and feels completelydifferent than my world. So this,
when you talk about neuroscience, itreally brings into question what is reality?
And I can really see how realitycould be so fragile for some people
who do use drugs because that gradientof what we you said, the collective
consciousness, what we define is reality, that gradient starts to break down in
(34:52):
drug users and the staple reality beginsto dissolve. And that's a terrifying thought.
So what what do you teach peoplewhen you're talking about developing compassion for
others? I think at the centerof it all is I think we really
(35:15):
need to move away from thinking ofpeople with mental illness and being instable,
and thinking of them as being crazyand scary, and think more of mental
disorders as neurobiological disorders. These arebrain disorders, just like a disorder that
(35:36):
you would have of the heart orthe arm, or the liver or the
leg, some sort of problem thatyou have with the body part. It's
exactly that, just at this timeit's with the brain, and we don't
understand what the problem is yet,so we can't label it. And in
the meantime, we've allowed all ofthese kind of negative associations to take hold.
(36:00):
Right that these people are crazy oret cetera, et cetera. So
I would really encourage people to comeaway from this conversation with thinking about mental
illness. It's just a body partdisorder and it's a brain problem, and
we're working really, really hard tofigure out what those issues are so that
we can fix them, just likeany other disease. That's really special to
(36:24):
think about, and I'm glad youbrought that up in just like a very
sensitive and compassionate way, and itgets me thinking more about people who do
see reality differently, whether schizophrenic oret cetera. I have two things I
want to say about this, andone I don't know if this is true
at all. I'm going to factcheck myself and comment in the show notes
(36:45):
after this, But I have heardthat there's some tribal colonies, I don't
know where where instead of treating schizophrenialike a disease, they use these people
and they keep them integrated in society, and they keep them as like wise
people or storytellers, and then theyend up doing a lot better because there's
looks like you said, you know, it's just one part of their brain
that's degraded. It's the whole personstill a person, and so instead of
(37:08):
ostracizing them from society, these tribeskeep them integrated into society with a role
that's better suited for the way theirbrain works, because they could be storytellers
or whatever. Have you heard ofthis. I haven't heard of that specifically,
but I really hope that it's true, and I think it translates to
other populations with other issues as well, or even like aging populations. Right,
(37:31):
the worst thing that we can dois cut someone off from society and
cut someone off from opportunities to figureout how to do things well for them
and how to interact with their environmentin a way that gives them joy or
inspires them or motivates them. Andthere's a different there's a different plug and
(37:54):
a different type of world that appealsto everyone. I think about like,
it's best if we can keep elderlypeople involved in some way and keep them
motivated, because what's life if youdon't have something to live for? Right,
And for people who are on theautism spectrum or something like that,
(38:15):
it's just that your brains just needthings to be set up just a little
bit differently. And if we tooktime to figure out how they needed their
world to be shaped in order forthem to be a little bit more successful.
That would be the best solution becauseultimately we don't have to resort to
medication, if we don't have towrite better to just figure out a way
(38:37):
to do it naturally. Absolutely,Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah.
The second thing I was going tosay with that, because I'm just
curious about the schizophrenic brain and theirreality versus our reality is and I said
this with quotations for those of youeven just listening is And I'm circling back
to what you commented on earlier aboutdreams, because people who are schizophrenic see
(39:01):
things that aren't necessarily I'm saying thiswith quotations. Again, they're not necessarily
there is that because that there's apossibility of their gradient between the dream world
and the waking world is that thatveils a little bit thinner, So it's
almost like they're dreaming in reality.So I think we have to put dreams
(39:24):
and delusions in slightly different categories justbecause the neural circuitry that we study for
both this is slightly different. SoI would think of it, I would
think of the hallucis the hallucinations anddelusions that they experience more in terms of
in the conscious mind. Right,we're not conscious when we're dreaming, so
that's a little that's a different state. But in the conscious mind, I
(39:46):
would think of them more as justdifferent representations of the same reality, just
that their inputs they are different andthey're coming up with a different story and
they can go down different trajectories becauseof it, which are often are more
interesting. So they're interpreting the samedata, they still have the same data.
Like I'm looking at a tree,they're looking at a dragon. So
(40:07):
their brain takes the green and theythink that's the color of the dragon.
They take the leaves and those arethe dragon's scales. They take the shape
of the tree, and it couldbe the dragon's neck because that how like
because their brain, we're all takingin the same information, but they're reprocessing
it differently, and that's where thedelusion comes from. Is that correct?
So what I would say, they'renot taking in the information in the same
(40:29):
way that you are, which wouldlead to these types of delusions. Even
though it looks on the outset thatlike they're looking at the same tree you
are, they might not be perceivingthe same tree. You are right,
they might instead be perceiving this dragon. If they perceive a dragon, then
like they're going off on a totallydifferent place in storyline, then you would
be walking through a park, right, there might be a little bit more
(40:51):
challenge on their adventure in an afternoon, But in terms of kind of thinking
about how they're brain might also bestructured to support that interpretation. There's there's
something called loose associations that takes placein the brain of people who have schizophrenia,
(41:13):
which allows them to make connections betweenthings that we wouldn't normally make connections
to and can lead them to Iguess when you think about it from a
neural perspective, you want to thinkabout it as like we have a certain
group of neurons that are pretty predictablygoing to be activated when we experience certain
things. Theres take a totally differentpath, and so they're bringing in all
(41:35):
kinds of other information while also takingin the information from the outside world that
we are, but they're adding alot more to it and therefore perceiving something
very different. Wow, because thereI don't know more creative way that's almost
kind of beautiful it's it's so strangeto think about just how complicated the brain
(41:55):
is, and that even kind ofmakes me think about the I don't know
where I was going with this,but just all the different brain types out
there, and how somebody might havesort of like a superpower, like I've
seen the sixty Minutes documentary where therewas the super recognizers. They never forget
(42:16):
a face, and they can seea face of an old person and a
baby and be and have a wholebunch of them and they can match those.
Yet those people's brains would do somethinglike that where it just takes in
that information different than my face ordifferent than my brain, and they can
pinpoint the face to the age everytime. Or people who have face blindness,
(42:37):
they're not taking in that information.They can't see a face at all
exactly. And I would say thatthere's another component there to consider, which
is that that type of the situationand that type of the superpower is often
both a blessing and a curse.Because we have this brain, we have
a finite amount of compute power,is probably the best way to think about
(43:00):
it. And you can spend thatcup in any way, shape or form
you want. But if you dovote a lot of power to one area,
it's often because you're losing it fromsomewhere else. And so that's another
principle that you can think about whenyou think about savant behavior, which is
a very small portion of folks thatare on the autism spectrum, but they
(43:22):
have these superpowers and they're able todo things that most humans can't, but
they often really struggle in other areasof their life because of it. Yeah,
the savant thing is super interesting.So if we so we've pretty much
proven that that's real, Like,uh, you know, the five year
(43:43):
old that can learn how to playthe saxophone and master it like that happens.
Wow, that's amazing. It wasn'tMozart considered to be a savant because
he was playing full symphonies by thetime he was seven. I don't know,
but I would not be surprised.Yeah. I one of my favorite
movie these about him as the movieAmadeis, and that came out so long
ago, I think in the eighties. But it's such an interesting story about
(44:06):
how his life was and because hewas a child prodigy, he grew up
to be kind of a messed upadult who was not very well adjusted because
he was only good at one thing, and that was writing music and playing
symphonies and it's function in society inother ways. Yeah, so let's talk
a little bit more about total recall. Given our current understanding of how we
(44:30):
can implant memories are not, doyou think we're on a trajectory to be
able to do this a little bitmore? I think we probably could.
I think we probably won't because Ithink that right now, the next revolution
(44:52):
and technology is really this like machinelearning in AI space, and that really,
I think is the next frontier ofa big push that also has its
ethical considerations, right, and peopleare already kind of nervous about that.
And that's just a computer. Ican only imagine the pushback that you would
(45:15):
get if you really went down thispath in humans. And I'm not even
sure how you would be able togo about it, right, because it
seems unfair to target patients who areexperiencing troubling scenarios with these experimental like memory
manipulation techniques. So there are someethics to be considered there, like is
(45:36):
it fair to do this to them? But you also couldn't really do it
in someone who's not experiencing any complicationswith their memory, because you couldn't really
justify it, like why so unlesspeople just like voluntarily which forgetting his name,
but this guy who was informed thathe voluntarily gave Arnold's character. Unless
(46:01):
people did something like that and reallyopted in for science, I don't see
it like becoming a reality or certainlynot an ethical one. Maybe this is
happening in like a basin underground somewhere, or another country that may not care
about ethics the same way. Whoknows, or of more other other I
(46:22):
don't. I don't even want tosay developed countries, but other countries I
know some have stronger ethics committees andsome have looser ethics committees. We could
say it that way. So isthere anything else you want to talk about
with memories fear memory implantation before weget to our reality check moment? I
(46:43):
don't think so. I think we'vecovered a lot of really interesting stuff and
this has been really fun for me. So if you have any other questions,
I mean, I'd be happy tokeep in touch and help out.
Yeah. Well, I think theonly other thing that I could talk about
forever is dreams. But I amsure I will find someone who will do
(47:05):
a whole episode on inception. Wecan talk correct, do we still the
cows come home? Then? Sohere's on reality check moment on a scale
of one to five, going frompure fiction, speculative science, fringe reality,
emerging fact, and science fact,how plausible is for us to implant
memories in the same way that wedid in total recall. So I'm gonna
(47:29):
have to go with emerging fact here, which I think is before on that
scale if I haven't graded in outre correction. And the reason for that
is like, we have a foundationof understanding from a neuroscience perspective to understand
how quite a few pieces of thispuzzle work and be able to play with
it enough to be dangerous enough tohave people question our ethics. So I
(47:52):
think the potential is there. Whetheror not it's feasible to implement to a
point where it would reach what wethought recall is another question. But I
do think there's quite a bit offeasibility, and I hope that we've successfully
demonstrated that. Wow, that's amazing, and you know this is just the
running joke. Now. I havenot had an episode yet where we haven't
(48:15):
brought up Uncle Ben from Spider Man, And with great power comes great responsibility,
And there's just this really demand inthe scientific community to remain ethical and
responsible in the practices that we're doing. Because it's like you said, Yeah,
we could use this for good andwe could help people with dramatic memories
(48:36):
or someone like me where it's evena simple thing where I just don't want
to be scared on airplanes anymore.Or we could help people go on lovely
vacations without leaving the comfort of theirhome. That could be really fun for
somebody who maybe isn't physically able todo or experience certain things. So those
are really cool, positive things thatwe could do. But on the other
hand, we saw on total Recalljust how terrifying and horrible this could go.
(49:00):
Oh. So it's just a reminder, Uncle Ben, with great power
comes great responsibility, and we justhope that the scientific community continues to do
good as we move forward. So, Doctor Wright, if they're we're going
to be wrapping up here now,is there any if you want people to
(49:20):
contact you or not contact you,or follow up on any of the research
that we talked about or concepts thatwe talked about. Do you have recommendations
for books, blogs, et ceterafor people to follow up on with some
of the concepts we talked about thatbooks and blade but see probably. Oh
actually, there's one book called TheBrain That Changes Itself by Norman Deutsge,
(49:45):
and I have been tuning the hornof this book for many, many years
now, and for people who arereally interested in getting a digestible but like
sophisticated enough understanding of how the brainworks and how you can really change your
brain, I think that's a greatbook to read and you learn about things
(50:07):
that you really didn't think were possibleand are pretty mind blowing in a medical
setting. So definitely check that out. And I of course open if anybody
has questions after this or wants tobring anything new to my attention. Since
I left my lad bench two yearsago, I'm always happy to learn new
(50:28):
things and ye with you. Well, we'll leave your contact information in the
description below, and thank you somuch everybody. This has been another episode
of reality Check Check
All right, everybody, welcome backto another episode of Reality Check the Science
of Fiction. And today we havedoctor Christina Wright with us here today,
and she is a neuroscientist by trainingwho received her PhD from Boston College and
specialized in the neurobiological basis of pathologicalfear, which to me is so fascinating
(00:24):
because fear is all whole science inand of itself. And today we're talking
about something that could be quite terrifyingfor a lot of people, which is
the movie Total Recall and the memoryimplantation that they used in the movie.
Paul, thanks, prepare for hypercrimeactivating activity. Just a gage tractor of
beluy, you're late for light speedlike speed, it's too slow? All
(00:45):
right, Reality Checks silliens. So, Christina, I don't know if you
got a chance to see Total Recallor read up on it, but tell
me just some of your initial thoughtswith the movie. Yeah, so,
I am going to be completely honestwith you. I did not have a
chance to watch the whole thing,So there there's my caveat right there.
(01:08):
However, I did listen to watchand read a few samaries, and I
think that it touches on a reallyinteresting topic, and it's timely in where
we are from a research standpoint andthink about whether or not this is something
that could be a reality, howfar we from this being fiction versus something
(01:30):
that could happen, What are thethe ethical implications, et cetera. I
think maybe the thing that stood outto me the most was the the at
the end, you still don't reallyknow what was real and what was fake.
But those were kind of my initialtakeaways. Yeah, no, and
it's I've watched both versions, theoriginal one with Arnold Schwarzenegger and then the
(01:53):
newer version, which I prefer theArnold version, even though he's like,
I feel so bad saying this.He's not the best actor, but it's
so eighties. It's so cheesy andgory and crass, and it's like there's
so many things they say in itthey're like, oh my gosh, they
would never say that now. Andthe seed well not even the CGI,
(02:15):
but the the prosthetics and the makeupis so angies. It's so over the
top. But I think one ofthe really terrifying concepts in this movie is
the fact that he doesn't know isthis a memory or is this not?
Is this real or is this not? So? I don't know if you
could speak to a little bit ofhow memories work. Yeah. Absolutely,
(02:42):
And before we get into that,I do want to encourage you to watch
it be documentary on Arnold Kursenegger's lifethat just came out not too long ago,
because it like goes over his progressionas an actor and it's fascinating.
Well, let's get small. Butback to the memory point. How do
you member work? Well, thereare like a billion different theories, and
(03:02):
by abilion, I mean there aremajor, probably like four major theories as
to how memories take root in thebrain and what their function is, how
they develop, what makes things stick, what makes things not stick? I
think the purpose is of this whatwe want to maybe zoom in on is
(03:23):
what makes memories different from reality?Is that what where we want to maybe
go first? Or well, Iguess I guess I would like to underscause
I don't actually understand how exactly memorieswork, and I've heard things that may
or may not be true. Forexample, I've heard that every time we
(03:44):
access the memory it degrades somehow.So I have you know, college one
oh one base level biology training,and I understand how neurons work, and
I think most people understand how neuronswork in the most basic sense, but
when it comes to actual memories,like what are they? Is it just
data stored in the brain? Isit a neuron itself? Is it code
(04:08):
within a neuron? What is amemory? Yeah, that's a great question.
Okay, So what you're speaking ofwhen you're referring to that degradation process
that can happen when you bring upa memory every time is part of the
theory of reconsolidation. So it's avery robust and reliable theory of kind of
(04:29):
how memory works. And essentially whatit refers to is once you have something
that gets stored in the brain asa memory, you have the ability to
pull it back up into the topof your mind and do something with it,
you know, bringing it into consciousnessis how we interact with thoughts that
we have stored over time and usethem to interact with our present environment.
And each time you bring it up, you have to remember that you have
(04:53):
other new information in your brain thatwasn't there when you filed it away previously.
So it's not necessarily that it's goingto degrade degrade every time, but
every time you resurface it, youhave the opportunity to edit it just a
little bit, because you're incorporating itwith a whole bunch of new thoughts and
information that weren't there previously. Sowhat that can do is, over time
(05:15):
cause you to edit that memory ina way that maybe you weren't planning to,
and it can actually become fundamentally differentthan the original one you stored however
many years ago. There is actuallyalso a piece that refers to you.
When you pull that memory up,it can actually get stronger each time.
(05:35):
Kind of a practice practice theory,if you will. You know, every
time you bring something up and youthink about it more, you're strengthening its
neural connection in your brain before filingit back away. So I wouldn't say
degradation is the necessarily the thing that'shappening. Just reframing is probably happening more
accurately, super interesting. So thatwould be a good explanation as to why
(06:00):
I might have a memory as achild playing with some toys. But I
don't remember if this is an actualmemory or if I remember it because I
saw it on a home video recordingand I've watched that recording so many times
that it reinforced the childhood memory exactly. And I think that that's one of
the biggest takeaways to keep in mindwhen it comes to memory, is that
(06:21):
it's not reality, it's not fact, and it is very much generated by
your brain and what you have goingon in your brain. So I think
it's really dangerous in a lot ofinstances to rely on your memory and really
feel like super certain that you knowthat's exactly how something happened, because it's
(06:43):
just that true. And that's whatmakes eyewitness testimony really challenging. But that's
sad conversation for many of you know, and I have heard that, like
there's there's the whole you know,what was the criminal wearing And someone's like,
he was wearing a blue shirt andhe was standing behind me, and
someone else is like, well itwas a she and she was wearing a
yellow shirt and she was standing infront of you. It's like their memories
(07:05):
are completely different. And that's justso fascinating that our different experiences can I
guess I like the word you said, edit, it can edit the memory
in the way that we recall it. So given that understand that surface level
understanding of how that works. Arewe are we able to like corrupt somebody's
(07:30):
memory of something by repeating it liketo them. Like if I'm telling a
story to a friend and I'm confidentlytelling them, no, you were wearing
a blue shirt. I promise youwould that start to change their memory of
the way they remembered a certain dayor event. I think it certainly could
if you. It depends on yourrelationship with that person. Right, if
(07:53):
some random person up the street istrying to convince you that they know of
something more about something than you do, you're far less likely to take them
seriously and take that into consideration andconsider you know, maybe I could have
been wrong. But if it's someoneyou trust and you admire or you look
up to and they're saying, ohno, you're absolutely inaccurate on that,
(08:16):
then yeah, that can lead youto reconsider whether or not your original interpretation
of the situation was correct and canlead you to change your mind and there
more change your memory. So whathappens to the old memory, because I'm
just thinking of it like file containers, does the old memory get stored further
back and it gets like overwritten,like it gets covered with the new memory
(08:39):
because it's still there. It's agreat question. So there are a few
different theories on this, and there'sstill quite a bit of work to be
done to determine exactly how these piecesare filed away in the brain and physically
where they manifest themselves. Like ifI were to look at the brain,
where is this memory, how isit laid out? Et cetera. Still
(09:01):
a lot of work to be donethere. But I would say probably the
easiest way to think about it isback to that editing principle, right,
so you can pull up that originalmemory, edit it a little bit,
add new information. Oh, thisguy or person that I really admire says
I'm wrong. I must be wrong. Let me change that, and then
tug it back away. I wouldsay, from a like real estate standpoint,
(09:24):
it would be highly impractical for usto store successive versions of separate overlapping
memories all over the brain because wewould run out of space eventually. So
it's probably more likely, given thatwe have a pretty efficient system, that
it would edit, rewrite, andthen put it back where it was.
Wow, that's absolutely insane to me. So on some level, there's bits
(09:46):
of our memory that do get takenand thrown out, vanishes into the ether
or whatnot to some level. Soyou know, cause it's like, I
hate to bring up a negative,but this is part of the science.
If somebody has a traumatic memory thatthe brain hides, that memory is still
(10:09):
in there, deep deep, deeptalks away. But when we block out
traumatic memories, they can get accessedlater in life. And that's something I've
always been curious about because I knowthat smell is a great way to access
memories. I smell something and Iremember when I was ten years old having
this magical experience. When it comesto accessing traumatic memories or hiding traumatic memories,
(10:37):
what do we know about that asfar as just the science of it
right now? What is our understanding? So that's a super great question and
super interesting to me. Definitely ahighlight of a highlight of my previous career.
So when you think about a traumaticmemory, for example, it's different
(11:00):
and a happy memory. It's differentthan a memory of like a to do
list that you have for or likea grocery shopping list, right that's something
that's a little bit more more mundane. So traumatic memories are more robust because
they are associated with really intense emotionalresponses. You wouldn't have the same type
(11:22):
of intensity associated with a grocery list, so you're more likely to forget that.
But when you when you think aboutlike the ability of a memory to
be recalled, the ones that aregoing to be more rope bust are therefore
more likely to be recalled later andrepressed memories are definitely a real thing,
(11:45):
and you could forget and not knowand have no conscious understanding of having a
memory, and then someday, however, many years down the road, you
get triggered in a particular way andhave that brought up into your consciousness.
Totally possible. Memories that are morelikely the last that long are more salient
because they either are associated with thereally strong emotion or they have like multi
(12:07):
modal information associated with them, Meaningyou have a certain sight that is triggered,
you have a certain smell that's triggered, maybe a sound, maybe an
emotion. The more facets and typesof information that come through your senses that
are aligned with that, and themore powerful they are, make that memory
(12:28):
more and more robust and more andmore likely to be triggered later on.
Fear or traumatic memories are one ofthe strongest things that we have, and
so therefore they are quite likely tobe triggered later on. Let me let
me pause and see if you haveany follow up questions there, because I
think i'm I've had to go downanother product. Well, so that has
(12:50):
to do with the mile in sheath, right. The milin sheath is like
sort of the integrity of the memory. And my understanding of that is the
mile and sheaf grows stronger, andI'll let you explain what that is,
but it grows stronger with two things, either repetition or something very intense that
was very strong to remember, eitherpositive or negative. So I think a
(13:13):
little point of clarification there. Themilin sheet is really critical for improving the
ability of a signal to get fromone neuron to another. Without the milin
sheath, a signal has to travelmuch more slowly, and so it's not
very efficient. And if a signaldoesn't get from one neuron to another quickly
(13:33):
and efficiently, that connection dies overtime because it's not like not getting plugged
in fast enough and powerful enough toactually charge something. So when you think
about the milin sheets, if we'rewe're looking at a neuron we have a
long axon that's a tail that connectsone neuron to another, and neurons communicate
(13:54):
with each other by sending electrical andchemical signals to communicate with each other all
over the brain and create these reallyfascinating and beautiful circuits. Mylon cheese are
like little booys that are all thatare along that axon. And so when
you put those little booies on thataxon, and I'm imagining like if you're
at one of those public swimming arenasoutside in a lake, you know,
(14:18):
like they have that rope that haslike those those little booies on it.
It's just like that, and fromthere you have an electrical signal that doesn't
need to go through every little pieceof that neuron axon anymore. It can
jump, so it makes it alot faster. So it goes boom boom
bom boom bom boom boom, andit's there instead of there are lested of
this. Just I had a vividreminder of b when I was an anatomy
(14:41):
class and he had us all goaround the karoom and clap, one student
at a time. Yeah, yeah, Like that's a poor it's like a
poor neuron connection. Having us eachclap one at a time, and then
he had us practice clapping every otherperson and it went faster, and then
Tam did every fifth person. Itwent even faster, and then we did
like every like fifteenth student clapped inthe signal went around the room in like
a couple seconds. So our thatwas my little lesson in anatomy. So
(15:05):
yeah, it's super interesting. Sothat sheath can be stronger or weaker,
and that's going to improve the signalof the neurons being able to talk to
each other and the quality of thememory. Not going to improve the quality
of the memory directly, but itis going to improve the ability of a
neuron to speak with another neuron anddevelop a stronger connection. And it's the
(15:30):
stronger connection between neurons that is thefoundation of a memory. So what I
mean by that is there's a wholeprinciple called neurons that fire together wire together.
If there's no firing, then thereare no connections in the brain because
the neurons aren't active. If theyare firing, but they're not firing like
(15:54):
in a way that they're connecting efficientlywith one one to another. Then if
connections are not super strong, they'llthey'll die, so it happens to a
dead neuron. And so unfortunately,if you die, if a neuron dies
because it's not being used, youwon't usually get that neuron back. So
(16:15):
we need to keep using our brainsas much as possible to maintain as many
of our neurons functioning throughout our lives. So constantly, learn, constantly,
like just try and exercise, takecare of your body, do whatever you
can to keep your brain healthy becauseit's the only one you get. Wow,
that's amazing. It's it's almost likeit really is kind of used or
(16:37):
lose it. Because I took myfirst major in college was American sign language,
and I took four years and Itry head it to like can I
sign my name? Thoughts about it, and it's like I have lost a
whole language. And I know thatthat's so many people's experience do so they're
dead. So if I wanted torelearn a language, it's not like it's
atrophied and I need to just strengthenit again. It's dead and I need
(16:59):
to rebuild it. So I knowI should step that back a little bit
sore. There is the possibility ofneurons dying for sure if they're not being
used. More likely in a healthybrain, those neurons have been recruited to
do some other type of a jobbecause they weren't being used for that original
job. But there is also thepossibility with like illicit drug use, maybe
(17:23):
not enough sleep, maybe not enoughdreaming, that your neurons can die and
then they're really really hard to hardto replace, and they probably won't be
replaced. And now I just wantto go down the rabbit hole of dreams.
Yeah, I'm going to try andstay good today and keep us on
topic. I didn't yet answer yoursecond question about the strength of the memory
(17:47):
and how that's how that's related toor not related to the mylin sheet,
so I just want to make surethat that's crystal clear. So the milin
sheet increases the ability of a neuronto effectively communicate with another neuron. But
the foundation of a memory is acluster of neurons firing together and strengthening that
connection over time, so that anytimeyou trigger that memory, a whole map
(18:11):
of neurons that are devoted to holdingonto that memory light up and activate for
you to experience that, and thenthey deactivate when you put it away,
so that here's here's an anecdote thatwe can speak to. Years ago.
I was in a minor motorcycle accident. I you know, super story.
(18:34):
I was. I was a newerwriter and I was driving in the springtime.
They salt the roads and they slidout on salt, and I just
had a minor accident. And thenback to back with that, I can't
remember which one came first. Iwas also in a ski accident, which
was a little bit more traumatic.I was not wearing a helmet. Wear
your helmet, kids wear your helmets, and dult ski in trees and I
hit my head pretty bad. Andever since I had those two accidents back
(18:57):
to back, I have been afraidof anything that's going beast. So if
I get on if I get ina car, and usually it's left hand
turns, if I'm in a powerat high speeds turning left, I get
scared. If I'm in an airplane, and I was never scared of airplanes
before, and we hit turbulence,it cut really bad. For a while.
I've been working on it, butI would be the person who was
(19:17):
just crying and I would be laughingto the person next to me, and
I'm like, I'm mean, thiswas going to happen, don't worry about
me. I'm just crying. I'mlike, my body's scared, but I'm
not. And I would talk abouthow I'm like, it's a physical fear.
I'm not actually scared of planes.I understand it's not going to crash.
But ever since that accident, itcreated that little fear cluster, and
I've just been fighting tooth and nailto not be scared of airplanes ever since.
(19:41):
Is that a correct assessment? Yeah? Absolutely, And I think what
you're really describing is a fear memorythat you created and was stored in your
brain. And although you've a dressedsome of like the conscious pieces right in
an attempt to overwrite this by understandand knowing that, like I'm in an
(20:02):
airplane, this is safe. LikeI can tell my friend that this is
probably going to happen, but likeI know that this is not how I
should respond. You've tried to combatit a little, but there are some
emotional responses that trigger physical responses,which is kind of similar to what you
would expect in post traumatic stress disorderor anxiety and fear disorders, where if
(20:26):
that brain pathway that was created andactivated and generated fear during that time when
you were experiencing these accidents in thistrauma, if it's triggered, it doesn't
matter what you think, it's justgoing to make your body do what it
thinks your body needs to do,which is express fear. And that was
(20:47):
actually part of my dissertation work wasfiguring out what part of your brain creates
this estimation of how much fear yourbody should produce to a given stimuli,
Like are there neurons that are responsiblefor doing the math and saying like this
is potentially scary, but I cansee that I'm safe and like this is
(21:07):
not a place where I really needto run and freak out or like or
what. And what I ended updiscovering is that there are literally neurons that
do that math and then tell youhow to behave and they are in the
fear part of the brain, orone of the parts that we think is
really important for fear. And whenyou have those neurons messing up their calculations,
(21:33):
that's when you can get over exaggeratedfear responses to things that really shouldn't
be that scary. Which is whatyou're describing. So it could be that
your estimation is just a little bitoff, and reasonably so, because you
experienced something really traumatic before and itwas real before, and so what's your
brain like, your brain is sittingthere being like, I know, you're
telling me that this isn't gonna happenagain, but I'm telling you that it's
(21:56):
already happened twice. That happens twice. That's about no more a motorcycle.
I'm still gonna ski just I'll keepit the blues and greens. Yeah,
but the hell so that so thebrain doing bad math could be a that's
that's kind of why we have totallyirrational fears, like things like phobias like
spiders and public speaking I think aretwo of the biggest fears. And public
(22:19):
speaking isn't you know, it's notdangerous, but people have such a fear
based on maybe a bad experience sociallybecause we have such high social equity.
That's interesting. So what about Imean, it sounds like there is some
(22:40):
science that we can kind of unpackon memory implantation, because it sounds like
we ourselves have the ability to overwriteour own memories to a degree, because
it's like, you know, wecan we can overwrite, you know,
something that's not scary to be scary, or we can overwrite something that's a
negative to become a positive, andwe it sounds like we're constantly doing this
already. What about artificially, arethere any artificial processes of false memories?
(23:07):
Or maybe not even artificial. I'mthinking of like you know in Total Recall,
where they hook him up to thegiant machine and zoop you have a
whole fake vacation, or now you'rea spy, So it's maybe not always
that machine. But what is thescientific understanding of implanted false or artificial memories?
That's a great question. So there'sactually a really cool ted talk from
(23:32):
Sea Ramirez Lab. Sever Ramirez isLab. He's based in Boston. It's
actually from like twenty thirteen. Thetitles like a Laser and a Mouse or
something like that. So I recommendto anybody who's interested in this topic,
but take a look at that video. But yeah, we do have the
ability to implant false memories, andI'll describe how that works. You'll maybe
(24:00):
a little bit disappointed because they're notas elaborate right now as a vacation in
Bali or wherever. But yes,we can manipulate memories for sure, and
we can implant false ones as well. And so to describe a little bit
of what they did, and wecan go into more detail if you want.
(24:22):
But they went into a mouse's brain, and this is some of that.
I use the same techniques in myin my work as well. They
went into a mouse's brain and theyhad a mouse experience fear by I believe
foot shock in this paradigm, butit could be mistaken. But let's say,
for argument's sake, we put amouse in a box, We shock
their foot, We make them afraidof this box. While doing that,
(24:45):
we put a probe in their brainthat allows us to see which neurons light
up when they become afraid. Andthe purpose of that probe and the purpose
of understanding which neurons light up whenthey're afraid, is now we know that
those neurons are involved in that thatfear of memory, right, and that
(25:07):
fear experience, and that fear ofmemory happening. So then what they did,
after they made sure that they knewthat this rat was afraid of this
box, they then moved this Iguess the mouse moved the mouse to a
new box and then using a lightwhich activates those same neurons. Talk more
about how that works. But youcan turn on a light and then activate
(25:30):
those same exact neurons that activated ina totally different environment where they express fear,
And you can make a rat afraidof a new environment and demonstrate a
fear memory in a totally new placethat they've never been before, just by
turning on the same neurons that wereresponsible for creating that memory in the first
place. So now you've created afalse memory because you've now made this mouse
(25:53):
afraid of something they have no businessbeing afraid of because they've never experienced it
before. And that's how that works. Wow, So I was the rot.
I was the rot I was.I had the ski accident, and
now I'm scared of airplanes, whichare not correlated because yes, my brain
took is. It was just highspeeds. Yes, what was scary to
(26:15):
me? And I don't recall theski accident. Actually I have no memory
of that day, but I couldonly assume that maybe the turbulence of the
skis during the crash was something thatwas scary that my brain locked onto and
all those specific neurons lit up,and then those same neurons are getting reinforced
on the airplane YEP. So Iwould say there's a slight difference, right,
(26:37):
because we don't know that we're activatingthe exact same memory for you when
you're on an airplane as when youwere in your accidents, whereas in the
experimental version we do know because we'vetagged and selected those neurons specifically and then
lit them back up in a totallynew place with yours. You could also
(26:59):
being something called fear transfer, right, So you've experienced fear in this first
environment, and then you've now foundyourself in an environment that has some of
the same characteristics, which has allowedyou to read bring that past memory up
in that past fear experience and fearresponse up into your present consciousness, and
(27:22):
then you've now applied it over multipletimes of doing that in iterations thinking to
this new environment. So you mayhave actively done that, not consciously,
but you may have actively transferred yourfear from one place to another because it
was so profouned for you. Sowhen we're implanting these memories, have we
(27:47):
gone beyond mice or is that wherethe research has stopped. So I would
say there's probably a chance that there'sbeen a more recent experiment in a monkey
that's happened, and from a humanstandpoint, I don't know what the latest
research is from the animal primate area, but I would imagine since that happened
(28:07):
in twenty thirteen that they have probablygone as far as a monkey. From
the human standpoint, we've talked aboutthe idea of editing memories in situations such
as like post traumatic stress disorder,where it would be really freaking helpful if
we didn't only have to rely ontalk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to try
(28:30):
and overcome with consciousness these really robustcorresponses. So at one point there was
a proposition and a bit of experimentationthat was being done to see if maybe
ketamine, a specific lower dose ofketamine could be administered timely, like very
shortly after a traumatic experience occurred andwhile that memory was being created and stored.
(28:55):
If you if you were to injectketamine when that person was not quite
yet fully formed that memory, like, can we interrupt the can we interrupt
the consolidation of this experience and preventit from being as strong as it may
be to create PTSD, maybe inpeople who are predisposed to PTSD just because
(29:15):
they have a lot of family membersor something like that who have experienced similar
tendencies. So there has been somediscussion about, like can we use drugs
to interrupt memories and prevent them frombeing so profound? But then we get
into this question of ethics, right, like how far can we really go?
What is like? What is ethical? Who can be in charge?
(29:40):
Is it? Is it okay toedit someone's memories? You of course hope
that people would want to do itfor good or maybe to inject happy memories,
But there's also the converse possibility thatsomeone tries to do something that's more
in line with the film, rightand delete someone's identity or delete a memory
that's really critical to who they areas a person or or or whatnot.
(30:03):
I can't think of anything. Soit sounds like we can edit memories a
few different ways. The first onewas just environmental, which is kind of
the natural way that we edit ourmemories already, everyone's doing that every single
day. And the second one wasthe example of the mouse, which would
be an electrical edit of the memories. And then the third one you talked
about is a chemical edit of thememories in all three or successful and the
(30:27):
you know, the second two orexperience fields that we're exploring a little bit
more. Are there any other potentialways that we could edit memories? I
can't think of any at this moment. I would say, like some sort
of mechanical like interference, right,some sort of implant or like electronic Yeah,
(30:56):
I know, it would still comedown to electronic or chemical, because
that's exactly that's what we are biologicalfeatures. So that really kind of gets
me thinking about reality and consciousness becauseif we can't even trust our own memories
to provide us the accurate recollection ofwhat happened, I think it kind of
(31:19):
brings into question kind of the challengeof what defines consciousness and how our memory
can define one's self because I havean identity that's built on all of my
memories. Yeah, if I can'ttrust those memories, how can I trust
my identity? So how from aneuroscience perspective, how can we define identity?
(31:45):
Yeah? I love your questions,This is great, Okay, So
your identity and also your perception ofthe world that you live in and what's
real and what's not I actually liketo think of and this is maybe a
little bit controversial as just like acommunal hallucination, oh man, because it
(32:07):
is your what you have in yourbrain and how you experience the world is
all based up on based upon whatyou perceived, and what you perceive is
completely based upon what you pay attentionto. So if you whatever you pay
attention to becomes a part of yourlittle world, and then your little world,
(32:30):
along with everybody else's world, ispaying attention to a whole flew of
things, and usually they're pretty muchin line with one another. And so
we've developed, we've developed this ideaof reality and come up with customs that
we think are appropriate and not appropriate, and created all these little rules.
But it's really just in agreed uponstate. Don't we don't know what a
(32:54):
real one? Is? So fascinatingbecause we have these equips that we use
in everyday language, it's like,oh, they're living in their own reality,
and it's like they truly are.If that person is taking in a
completely different set of sensory information thanyou are. And I'm not even talking
about clinically schizophrenic people someone living intheir own little world. Their reality is
(33:16):
truly different than yours, exactly,and you can't repute it because it is.
It fundamentally is. And I thinkthat that's where it's really important for
me to help people develop more compassionto people who do experience hallucination, such
as right, people who have schizophreniaor experience some sort of delusion and an
(33:40):
inability to understand the reality that weare. It's just that their inputs are
different. Their perception of the worldis different. Their brain isn't set up
to see and observe and understand thingsin the way that ours is, and
so of course they're going to comeup with a different result. And that
is the reality period. Well.And even excuse me, even looking at
(34:07):
humans versus animals, because animals aregoing to take in a completely different set
of sensory information as well. SoI mean, this is kind of like
breaking my brain right now. Sorryaudience, tell you guys listening this,
I hope we all have some timeto decompress after this and absorb this podcast.
But like you know, my dog'sreality is highly based on scent sensory,
(34:30):
so his world looks and feels completelydifferent than my world. So this,
when you talk about neuroscience, itreally brings into question what is reality?
And I can really see how realitycould be so fragile for some people
who do use drugs because that gradientof what we you said, the collective
consciousness, what we define is reality, that gradient starts to break down in
(34:52):
drug users and the staple reality beginsto dissolve. And that's a terrifying thought.
So what what do you teach peoplewhen you're talking about developing compassion for
others? I think at the centerof it all is I think we really
(35:15):
need to move away from thinking ofpeople with mental illness and being instable,
and thinking of them as being crazyand scary, and think more of mental
disorders as neurobiological disorders. These arebrain disorders, just like a disorder that
(35:36):
you would have of the heart orthe arm, or the liver or the
leg, some sort of problem thatyou have with the body part. It's
exactly that, just at this timeit's with the brain, and we don't
understand what the problem is yet,so we can't label it. And in
the meantime, we've allowed all ofthese kind of negative associations to take hold.
(36:00):
Right that these people are crazy oret cetera, et cetera. So
I would really encourage people to comeaway from this conversation with thinking about mental
illness. It's just a body partdisorder and it's a brain problem, and
we're working really, really hard tofigure out what those issues are so that
we can fix them, just likeany other disease. That's really special to
(36:24):
think about, and I'm glad youbrought that up in just like a very
sensitive and compassionate way, and itgets me thinking more about people who do
see reality differently, whether schizophrenic oret cetera. I have two things I
want to say about this, andone I don't know if this is true
at all. I'm going to factcheck myself and comment in the show notes
(36:45):
after this, But I have heardthat there's some tribal colonies, I don't
know where where instead of treating schizophrenialike a disease, they use these people
and they keep them integrated in society, and they keep them as like wise
people or storytellers, and then theyend up doing a lot better because there's
looks like you said, you know, it's just one part of their brain
that's degraded. It's the whole personstill a person, and so instead of
(37:08):
ostracizing them from society, these tribeskeep them integrated into society with a role
that's better suited for the way theirbrain works, because they could be storytellers
or whatever. Have you heard ofthis. I haven't heard of that specifically,
but I really hope that it's true, and I think it translates to
other populations with other issues as well, or even like aging populations. Right,
(37:31):
the worst thing that we can dois cut someone off from society and
cut someone off from opportunities to figureout how to do things well for them
and how to interact with their environmentin a way that gives them joy or
inspires them or motivates them. Andthere's a different there's a different plug and
(37:54):
a different type of world that appealsto everyone. I think about like,
it's best if we can keep elderlypeople involved in some way and keep them
motivated, because what's life if youdon't have something to live for? Right,
And for people who are on theautism spectrum or something like that,
(38:15):
it's just that your brains just needthings to be set up just a little
bit differently. And if we tooktime to figure out how they needed their
world to be shaped in order forthem to be a little bit more successful.
That would be the best solution becauseultimately we don't have to resort to
medication, if we don't have towrite better to just figure out a way
(38:37):
to do it naturally. Absolutely,Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah.
The second thing I was going tosay with that, because I'm just
curious about the schizophrenic brain and theirreality versus our reality is and I said
this with quotations for those of youeven just listening is And I'm circling back
to what you commented on earlier aboutdreams, because people who are schizophrenic see
(39:01):
things that aren't necessarily I'm saying thiswith quotations. Again, they're not necessarily
there is that because that there's apossibility of their gradient between the dream world
and the waking world is that thatveils a little bit thinner, So it's
almost like they're dreaming in reality.So I think we have to put dreams
(39:24):
and delusions in slightly different categories justbecause the neural circuitry that we study for
both this is slightly different. SoI would think of it, I would
think of the hallucis the hallucinations anddelusions that they experience more in terms of
in the conscious mind. Right,we're not conscious when we're dreaming, so
that's a little that's a different state. But in the conscious mind, I
(39:46):
would think of them more as justdifferent representations of the same reality, just
that their inputs they are different andthey're coming up with a different story and
they can go down different trajectories becauseof it, which are often are more
interesting. So they're interpreting the samedata, they still have the same data.
Like I'm looking at a tree,they're looking at a dragon. So
(40:07):
their brain takes the green and theythink that's the color of the dragon.
They take the leaves and those arethe dragon's scales. They take the shape
of the tree, and it couldbe the dragon's neck because that how like
because their brain, we're all takingin the same information, but they're reprocessing
it differently, and that's where thedelusion comes from. Is that correct?
So what I would say, they'renot taking in the information in the same
(40:29):
way that you are, which wouldlead to these types of delusions. Even
though it looks on the outset thatlike they're looking at the same tree you
are, they might not be perceivingthe same tree. You are right,
they might instead be perceiving this dragon. If they perceive a dragon, then
like they're going off on a totallydifferent place in storyline, then you would
be walking through a park, right, there might be a little bit more
(40:51):
challenge on their adventure in an afternoon, But in terms of kind of thinking
about how they're brain might also bestructured to support that interpretation. There's there's
something called loose associations that takes placein the brain of people who have schizophrenia,
(41:13):
which allows them to make connections betweenthings that we wouldn't normally make connections
to and can lead them to Iguess when you think about it from a
neural perspective, you want to thinkabout it as like we have a certain
group of neurons that are pretty predictablygoing to be activated when we experience certain
things. Theres take a totally differentpath, and so they're bringing in all
(41:35):
kinds of other information while also takingin the information from the outside world that
we are, but they're adding alot more to it and therefore perceiving something
very different. Wow, because thereI don't know more creative way that's almost
kind of beautiful it's it's so strangeto think about just how complicated the brain
(41:55):
is, and that even kind ofmakes me think about the I don't know
where I was going with this,but just all the different brain types out
there, and how somebody might havesort of like a superpower, like I've
seen the sixty Minutes documentary where therewas the super recognizers. They never forget
(42:16):
a face, and they can seea face of an old person and a
baby and be and have a wholebunch of them and they can match those.
Yet those people's brains would do somethinglike that where it just takes in
that information different than my face ordifferent than my brain, and they can
pinpoint the face to the age everytime. Or people who have face blindness,
(42:37):
they're not taking in that information.They can't see a face at all
exactly. And I would say thatthere's another component there to consider, which
is that that type of the situationand that type of the superpower is often
both a blessing and a curse.Because we have this brain, we have
a finite amount of compute power,is probably the best way to think about
(43:00):
it. And you can spend thatcup in any way, shape or form
you want. But if you dovote a lot of power to one area,
it's often because you're losing it fromsomewhere else. And so that's another
principle that you can think about whenyou think about savant behavior, which is
a very small portion of folks thatare on the autism spectrum, but they
(43:22):
have these superpowers and they're able todo things that most humans can't, but
they often really struggle in other areasof their life because of it. Yeah,
the savant thing is super interesting.So if we so we've pretty much
proven that that's real, Like,uh, you know, the five year
(43:43):
old that can learn how to playthe saxophone and master it like that happens.
Wow, that's amazing. It wasn'tMozart considered to be a savant because
he was playing full symphonies by thetime he was seven. I don't know,
but I would not be surprised.Yeah. I one of my favorite
movie these about him as the movieAmadeis, and that came out so long
ago, I think in the eighties. But it's such an interesting story about
(44:06):
how his life was and because hewas a child prodigy, he grew up
to be kind of a messed upadult who was not very well adjusted because
he was only good at one thing, and that was writing music and playing
symphonies and it's function in society inother ways. Yeah, so let's talk
a little bit more about total recall. Given our current understanding of how we
(44:30):
can implant memories are not, doyou think we're on a trajectory to be
able to do this a little bitmore? I think we probably could.
I think we probably won't because Ithink that right now, the next revolution
(44:52):
and technology is really this like machinelearning in AI space, and that really,
I think is the next frontier ofa big push that also has its
ethical considerations, right, and peopleare already kind of nervous about that.
And that's just a computer. Ican only imagine the pushback that you would
(45:15):
get if you really went down thispath in humans. And I'm not even
sure how you would be able togo about it, right, because it
seems unfair to target patients who areexperiencing troubling scenarios with these experimental like memory
manipulation techniques. So there are someethics to be considered there, like is
(45:36):
it fair to do this to them? But you also couldn't really do it
in someone who's not experiencing any complicationswith their memory, because you couldn't really
justify it, like why so unlesspeople just like voluntarily which forgetting his name,
but this guy who was informed thathe voluntarily gave Arnold's character. Unless
(46:01):
people did something like that and reallyopted in for science, I don't see
it like becoming a reality or certainlynot an ethical one. Maybe this is
happening in like a basin underground somewhere, or another country that may not care
about ethics the same way. Whoknows, or of more other other I
(46:22):
don't. I don't even want tosay developed countries, but other countries I
know some have stronger ethics committees andsome have looser ethics committees. We could
say it that way. So isthere anything else you want to talk about
with memories fear memory implantation before weget to our reality check moment? I
(46:43):
don't think so. I think we'vecovered a lot of really interesting stuff and
this has been really fun for me. So if you have any other questions,
I mean, I'd be happy tokeep in touch and help out.
Yeah. Well, I think theonly other thing that I could talk about
forever is dreams. But I amsure I will find someone who will do
(47:05):
a whole episode on inception. Wecan talk correct, do we still the
cows come home? Then? Sohere's on reality check moment on a scale
of one to five, going frompure fiction, speculative science, fringe reality,
emerging fact, and science fact,how plausible is for us to implant
memories in the same way that wedid in total recall. So I'm gonna
(47:29):
have to go with emerging fact here, which I think is before on that
scale if I haven't graded in outre correction. And the reason for that
is like, we have a foundationof understanding from a neuroscience perspective to understand
how quite a few pieces of thispuzzle work and be able to play with
it enough to be dangerous enough tohave people question our ethics. So I
(47:52):
think the potential is there. Whetheror not it's feasible to implement to a
point where it would reach what wethought recall is another question. But I
do think there's quite a bit offeasibility, and I hope that we've successfully
demonstrated that. Wow, that's amazing, and you know this is just the
running joke. Now. I havenot had an episode yet where we haven't
(48:15):
brought up Uncle Ben from Spider Man, And with great power comes great responsibility,
And there's just this really demand inthe scientific community to remain ethical and
responsible in the practices that we're doing. Because it's like you said, Yeah,
we could use this for good andwe could help people with dramatic memories
(48:36):
or someone like me where it's evena simple thing where I just don't want
to be scared on airplanes anymore.Or we could help people go on lovely
vacations without leaving the comfort of theirhome. That could be really fun for
somebody who maybe isn't physically able todo or experience certain things. So those
are really cool, positive things thatwe could do. But on the other
hand, we saw on total Recalljust how terrifying and horrible this could go.
(49:00):
Oh. So it's just a reminder, Uncle Ben, with great power
comes great responsibility, and we justhope that the scientific community continues to do
good as we move forward. So, Doctor Wright, if they're we're going
to be wrapping up here now,is there any if you want people to
(49:20):
contact you or not contact you,or follow up on any of the research
that we talked about or concepts thatwe talked about. Do you have recommendations
for books, blogs, et ceterafor people to follow up on with some
of the concepts we talked about thatbooks and blade but see probably. Oh
actually, there's one book called TheBrain That Changes Itself by Norman Deutsge,
(49:45):
and I have been tuning the hornof this book for many, many years
now, and for people who arereally interested in getting a digestible but like
sophisticated enough understanding of how the brainworks and how you can really change your
brain, I think that's a greatbook to read and you learn about things
(50:07):
that you really didn't think were possibleand are pretty mind blowing in a medical
setting. So definitely check that out. And I of course open if anybody
has questions after this or wants tobring anything new to my attention. Since
I left my lad bench two yearsago, I'm always happy to learn new
(50:28):
things and ye with you. Well, we'll leave your contact information in the
description below, and thank you somuch everybody. This has been another episode
of reality Check Check
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