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icymist

(15,888 posts)
Mon Jun 2, 2014, 10:22 PM Jun 2014

Scientists Selectively Erase And Restore Memories (Whoa!)

?itok=LYQ8OAAb

n a groundbreaking new study, researchers at the University of California, San Diego erased and then reactivated memories by stimulating neurons in the brains of genetically engineered rats with a series of light pulses that have been previously shown to strengthen or weaken the connections between brain cells. This is the first study to be able to directly show that the strengthening or weakening of these connections, called synapses, is the underlying basis for memory. The study has been published in Nature.

Neurons communicate with each other via synapses, which are the tiny gaps between cells that permit the flow of information in the form of a chemical or electrical signal. Early research found that repeated electrical stimulation of neurons within a brain region called the hippocampus enhanced the ability of these cells to communicate with neighbors. This process is called long-term potentiation (LTP), and it has long been suspected that this is the underlying basis of memory formation. Despite decades of research, however, no one has unequivocally demonstrated that this is the case.

For this study, a team of researchers led by UCSD neuroscientist Roberto Manilow first engineered rats so that their brain cells produced a light sensitive protein which could be activated by a pulse of light delivered by an optical fiber implanted into the brain. They then used this optogenetics to condition the rats to associate pain with optical stimulation by delivering light pulses to certain neuronal populations and then shocking the rats. The rats quickly began to associate the optical stimulation with pain and displayed fear responses when the neurons were stimulated. The scientists were able to demonstrate telltale signs of LTP by looking at chemical changes in the neurons.

Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-selectively-erase-and-restore-memories#cVrg9WggVJ6YW4YH.99
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Scientists Selectively Erase And Restore Memories (Whoa!) (Original Post) icymist Jun 2014 OP
In other news, 'Rats Enjoy Tee Martooni Lunches.' nt valerief Jun 2014 #1
Hrmmm...Scary stuff! Sounds like an old Schwartzenegger film. Snarkoleptic Jun 2014 #2
Get your ass to Mars. n/t Flying Squirrel Jun 2014 #3
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind DesertDiamond Jun 2014 #4
Yup sakabatou Jun 2014 #6
We have always been at war with Eastasia. FiveGoodMen Jun 2014 #5
That's what Dr. Ewan Cameron was trying to accomplish as part of MKULTRA. bananas Jun 2014 #7

Snarkoleptic

(5,995 posts)
2. Hrmmm...Scary stuff! Sounds like an old Schwartzenegger film.
Mon Jun 2, 2014, 11:46 PM
Jun 2014

Total Recall- 1990

Howdy, stranger! This is Hauser. If things have gone wrong, I'm talking to myself and you don't have a wet towel around your head. Now, whatever your name is, get ready for the big surprise. You are not you, you're me.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100802/

bananas

(27,509 posts)
7. That's what Dr. Ewan Cameron was trying to accomplish as part of MKULTRA.
Sat Jun 7, 2014, 10:49 AM
Jun 2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

In 1957, with funding from a CIA front organization, Dr. Ewan Cameron of the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada began MKULTRA Subproject 68.[127] His experiments were designed to first "depattern" individuals, erasing their minds and memories—reducing them to the mental level of an infant—and then to "rebuild" their personality in a manner of his choosing.[128] To achieve this, Cameron placed patients under his "care" into drug-induced comas for up to 88 days, and applied numerous high voltage electric shocks to them over the course of weeks or months, often administering up to 360 shocks per person. He would then perform what he called "psychic driving" experiments on the subjects, where he would repetitively play recorded statements, such as "You are a good wife and mother and people enjoy your company", through speakers he had implanted into blacked-out football helmets that he bound to the heads of the test subjects (for sensory deprivation purposes). The patients could do nothing but listen to these messages, played for 16–20 hours a day, for weeks at a time. In one case, Cameron forced a person to listen to a message non-stop for 101 days.[128] Using CIA funding, Cameron converted the horse stables behind Allen Memorial into an elaborate isolation and sensory deprivation chamber which he kept patients locked in for weeks at a time.[128] Cameron also induced insulin comas in his subjects by giving them large injections of insulin, twice a day, for up to two months at a time.[110] Several of the children who Cameron experimented on were sexually abused, in at least one case by several men. One of the children was filmed numerous times performing sexual acts with high-ranking federal government officials, in a scheme set up by Cameron and other MKULTRA researchers, to blackmail the officials to ensure further funding for the experiments.[129]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Ewan_Cameron

Donald Ewen Cameron (24 December 1901 – 8 September 1967)[1] — known as D. Ewen Cameron or Ewen Cameron — was a Scottish-born psychiatrist involved in the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) MKULTRA mind control program.[2] He served as President of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, the American Psychopathological Association and the Society of Biological Psychiatry during the 1950s. Notwithstanding his high professional reputation, he has been criticized for his administration, without informed consent, of disproportionately-intense electroshock therapy and experimental drugs, including LSD, which rendered some patients permanently comatose.[citation needed]


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