MIT scientists implant a false memory into a mouse’s brain and Ode To The Psycho-molecular Code
When I wrote my first dcience rhyme,Ode To The Pschomolecular Code, in 1980 I assumed ,based upon the work of the Swedish molecular biologist Holger Hyden, that all human memory and animal memory is based upon RNA and and its protein that was not rigidly coded by the genetic code itself,but instead was produced by neurons in the brain in order to create memory of the organism in relation to experiences and input from the peropheral nervour system dending those messages.The brains that house those neurons that form the RNA and protein responsible for creating and storing molecular memories are similar to a womb in preventing rejection of those alien proteins created by memory formation just as the womb houses a fetus and protects it from its mother's own immune system that would otherwise attact the cells of the feutus and the males foreign genes and proteins as if they were invading cells.
Learning and memory: molecules
web.neurobio.arizona.edu/gronenberg/nrsc581/.../learnmemmol.pdf
memory). Holger Hyden: new specific RNA is created for each memory. Hyden's ... in RNA. (current interpretation: long term learning requires protein synthesis).http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/inception-mit-scientists-implant-a-false-memory-into-a-mouses-brain/2013/07/25/47bdee7a-f49a-11e2-a2f1-a7acf9bd5d3a_story.html
Inception: MIT scientists implant a false memory into a mouse’s brain
Courtesy of Xu Liu and Steve Ramirez -
The hippocampus of a mouse brain, after the making of a
memory. The cells glowing in red contain the memory of a particular
environment and have been genetically tricked to be capable of being
turned on with just brief pulses of light.
Scientists have successfully implanted a false memory into a mouse’s brain — a seemingly far-fetched idea reminiscent of a science fiction film.
Employers impose caps on part-time workers to keep them below the 30-hour threshold.
The first step took place in an experiment last year in which Ramirez and his colleagues isolated an individual memory in a mouse’s brain, tagged the brain cells associated with it and induced recall of the memory at will by forcing those neurons to fire. In this study they manipulated a real memory — essentially causing cross-talk between a prior memory and an ongoing experience — to create a new, false memory associating the two.
Their research was published online Thursday in the journal Science.
False memories in humans often result from swapping out one detail for another. Sometimes these mistakes are trivial, such as swearing that you left your keys on the kitchen table only to find them hanging in the garage. But in a courtroom setting, a false eyewitness account can destroy an innocent person’s life.
Ramirez recounts a true story about an Australian psychologist who was arrested for a rape he did not commit. Physically, he fit the bill of the victim’s description to a T, but he had a foolproof alibi. He was speaking on a live television show at the time of the rape — the same show, it turned out, the victim had been watching right before her attack. As a result, she described him as her attacker, even though it wasn’t possible.
Red room = danger
In their experiment, the scientists implanted memories associated with certain rooms or chambers they placed the mouse in. Similar to when you first visit a friend’s apartment and a form a memory about his ratty couch and cramped bathroom, a mouse explores and takes mental note of a given chamber’s nooks and crannies.
Say a mouse gets put in a chamber with red walls. It is sniffing around when suddenly it feels a mild shock zap its feet. When the mouse is dropped into the same red room the next day, even if there’s no shock, it recalls the unpleasant experience and freezes in fear.
“[After the jolt,] it formed a new memory that this chamber is a very dangerous place,” said senior author and MIT neuroscientist Susumu Tonegawa.
Next, Tonegawa and his colleagues wanted to find out if they could induce recollection of a memory at will by forcing the neurons associated with that memory to fire. Putting the mouse in a different, benign blue room, it boldly moves about and probes the new surroundings as usual. But once the scientists force those neurons to activate, it immediately remembers the bad experience and freezes.
“Now that we can reactivate a memory, can we tinker with that memory, maybe making it into a false memory?” asked Ramirez.
Putting a new mouse in the red chamber, they let it recognize the room as harmless. The following day, they had it explore a blue-walled chamber, and then gave it a mild jolt while simultaneously inducing recall of the red room. This was meant to artificially associate the memory of the shock-free red room with the fear of being shocked.
On the third day, Tonegawa and his colleagues wanted to see whether this false association had successfully been implanted. They placed the mouse in the red room, where it froze even though nothing bad had ever happened to it there. A false memory had been formed and recalled.
Process of evolution
So why is the brain, whether rodent or human, so susceptible to muddling up the past?
“My hypothesis is that actually this is a trade-off of other functions that the human brain acquired during evolution,” said Tonegawa. “Human beings are very imaginative and creative animals.”
Ramirez agrees: “Memories are remarkable, and they are nature’s only real-time machine that exists right now. But sometimes those details, the bits of information in your brain, can get misincorporated and misassociated with other bits.”
Because he finds implanting fear “kind of depressing,” Ramirez next wants to try to implanting pleasurable memories in mice, such as thoughts about rodents of the opposite sex.
And though inception won’t happen anytime soon in people, in principle, it should be possible to isolate a human memory and activate it at will.
“We would have every reason to expect [inception] would happen in humans exactly as it happened in mice,” said Michael J. Kahana, director of Penn’s Computational Memory Lab, who calls the study “a technical tour-de-force.”
Possible applications for this type of research could arise for post-traumatic stress disorder, which involves the intrusion of unwanted memories.
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The following rhyme,Ode To The Psychomolecular Code,was strangely,to me,begun shortly before John Lennon was murdered and the last lines finished very shortly afterwards.John Lennon was shot on the Catholic Church's Feast of Immaculate Conception,Decmber 8,1980 that was created by Pope Pius number such and such in the 1850s..Whether or not the murderer himself knew this or or any reason planned his assaination for that particulsar day I have no idea but he apparently was some sort of Christian religious fanatic and was motivated at least in part by the Beatles claim that the modern mass media had made them more popular that Jesus which was a simple technologic fact just as Hitler with the newspaper and radio,etc. technology of his day had also become bettwer known than Jesus had in his day.
to be continued
http://politicalandsciencerhymes.blogspot.com/2011/09/ode-to-psychomolecular-code.html
Ode to the Psychomolecular Code
by Tony Ryals
Franklin, Watson and Crick,
Cracked the gene code - pretty slick,
But yet another code,
Upon which their intellects rode,
Still eluded their scientific mode,
The scientific sages,
Still haven't discovered the source from which
their intellect rages,
Even though it appears certain,
That behind the intellectual curtain,
Another code is working,
Like the gene code - the brain code moves through space,
While relatively sets the pace,
Even for the basket case,
Evolution obeys the rules,
And uses them as tools,
Regardless of societies fools,
The gene code created Einstein's brain,
Crick, Watson and Franklin the same,
But their genes were in a different space,
Which gave to each a different face,
And this also applies to the brain, But this ain't the end of the tale,
Because another code exists that ain't known so well,
Although the genes create the brain,
This ain't the end of the game,
Thus I begin my ode,
To the psychomolecular code,
It's experientially evolved,
Although its separation from the gene code is far from resolved,
Every central nervous system organism,
Has a code that at least approximates human intellectualism,
Lobsters and chickens do,
Dogs and monkeys too,
Although Pavlov's dogs salivated at a bell,
Their gene codes did not predetermine this hypnotic spell,
Sociobiologist Dawkins might account for these poor dogs response with memes,
Which he proposes is the mind's answer to genes,
A meme is to the psychomolecular code,
What the gene is to the genetic code,
That a dog should have memes we should not be surprised,
It's just that the human brain is bigger and more organized,
In the human female estrus has become extinct,
And human female desire is now more brain linked,
So even sex is no longer driven exclusively by instinct,
And this must surely say something even for the human male,
Whose brain often dictates sexual preferences as well,
This is obvious in the male homosexual,
Whose attraction is not only hormonal but also intellectual,
And of the males there are very masculine gays,
So hormones don't determine sexual preference always,
The synthetic organics polluting the land,
Cannot be blamed directly on a genetic strand,
There is no gene code making DDT, Or Dr. Thimann's 2,4-D,
Just a human brain with a university degree,
There once was a doctor named Bateson,
Who said the mind had no time-space in,
His theory was a mess,
And as you might guess,
Einstein had no real place in,
But when he died,
And his mind entropyed,
It dispersed from the space he denied,
And only a year or so later,
His former home in Ben Lomond, California was used to empty a container,
It was malathion - a pesticide,
From the very time-space Dr. Bateson denied,
In Sacramento there's the Bateson building,
Dedicated by Governor Brown who thought it a solar building,
But the solar heated air in it wouldn't move,
Thus the solar heated toxins it couldn't remove,
From the solar heated atmosphere of the Bateson building&
It may have been formaldehyde,
Or another synthetic organic out gassed from the building materials inside,
But the state employees became sick inside,
From the very mind-space Dr. Bateson denied,
But there's still the question of religion,
Which is also probably located in the psychomolecular region,
We have Aryans who call themselves Jews just for politics,
And Asians who are no longer Buddhist but Catholics,
We have Christians of every extraction,
Thanks mainly to Guttenbergís printing press contraption
If Aryans can be Jews,
I guess what this proves,
Is that the genes don't program religion,
If the human brain codes do not become more synchronous with the needs of the gene codes that makes them,
Their very own brain codes may very well bake them,
Herein I end my ode to the psychomolecular code,
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