Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Be There and Wealth into Horrid Thinking. The
Speaker 1: podcast it looks at the future and says, I remember
Speaker 1: when rock was young. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. So, um, memory.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about memory today. Specifically, I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about memory because it's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things that pops up in science fiction, the idea of
Speaker 1: messing with memory. I thought you were going to say,
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite things that pops up in
Speaker 1: my brain. It can be I don't know, are you guys.
Speaker 1: Do you guys ever have that issue where you are
Speaker 1: you are feeling really relaxed and content and you're you're
Speaker 1: feeling like things are really going well, and then your
Speaker 1: brain this whole this can't happen, and so pulls up
Speaker 1: a terrible memory of something you did where you made
Speaker 1: a complete jackass of yourself and then replays it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: brains are jerks. It wouldn't be awesome to get rid
Speaker 1: of that memory so that we would no longer have
Speaker 1: that and when we're happy and content, we can just
Speaker 1: basque in the moment. Oh absolutely, and according to science fiction,
Speaker 1: this is easy peasy all the time, right continually. Wait,
Speaker 1: are we talking about about removing bad memories? Are adding
Speaker 1: good memories? Either one? Okay, so you have like inception, Sure,
Speaker 1: that's kind of that's more like than the dream world.
Speaker 1: But that's related to memory, all right, fair enough, that
Speaker 1: can definitely involve Yeah, you're right that that is dreams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's getting mixed up there. But but total recall, Total recall.
Speaker 1: Now that's a classic film, and we're talking about the
Speaker 1: nineteen is the amazing, amazing science fiction film. I did
Speaker 1: not see the more recent one, but it looked slick
Speaker 1: and boring. I saw the original one in the theater.
Speaker 1: I remember all the stories coming out about how the
Speaker 1: body count in that movie was astronomically high. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly violent. Yeah, and it uh, of course has one
Speaker 1: of the best tour de force performances by Mr Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 1: You mean on the commentary track where he describes everything
Speaker 1: that's happening on the screen as it happens. That that also,
Speaker 1: I was thinking specifically in the context of the film itself,
Speaker 1: but it does in fact spill over into the meadow
Speaker 1: world around the film. Thank you, Thank you, Joe. Uh,
Speaker 1: that was a direct quote. We want to make sure
Speaker 1: we reference that, but yeah, total recall. Of course, the
Speaker 1: the premise of the movie is that you have a
Speaker 1: character who he's kind of like going on a vacation,
Speaker 1: but in this in this case, he's having a vacation
Speaker 1: implanted in his mind. Yeah. The service they sell is
Speaker 1: they say, well, you know, it's cheaper than going on
Speaker 1: an actual vacation. We'll just give you memories that make
Speaker 1: you feel like you had a vacation. And in this case,
Speaker 1: the memories were supposed to make him feel as if
Speaker 1: he were some sort of super spy who had traveled
Speaker 1: to Mars and been part of this major operation where
Speaker 1: uh it was you know, he was kind of the
Speaker 1: difference between life and death for the planet. But within
Speaker 1: the context of the film, it also opens up the
Speaker 1: possibility that he really is, in fact, this superspy and
Speaker 1: he just believes he's a normal guy because those memories
Speaker 1: have been implanted. Yeah, So either way, whether you go
Speaker 1: with the story that he's a normal guy but believes
Speaker 1: he's a spy and everything else is playing out in
Speaker 1: his mind, or he really is a spy but he
Speaker 1: thought he was a normal dude because his memories had
Speaker 1: been supplanted by these these fake ones. We're talking about
Speaker 1: messing with memory. Uh, And this is not the only
Speaker 1: time we see this pop up in science fiction, certainly not.
Speaker 1: There was also Strange Days. Strange Days Out Where is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite, incredibly disturbing films. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: that that movie and being very interested in the idea
Speaker 1: of this is this is just sort of a thing
Speaker 1: that is uh, sort of the often in that particular movie.
Speaker 1: But they have the super conducting quantum interference device or SQUID,
Speaker 1: and this allows you to record memories. So a person
Speaker 1: who has one of these devices can record memories that
Speaker 1: they are experiencing and then can essentially export those memories.
Speaker 1: I mean they hold onto them themselves too, it's more
Speaker 1: like a copy. They can export a copy of those
Speaker 1: memories to someone else who can then experience those memories.
Speaker 1: In the context of the movie, it all ends up
Speaker 1: involving a robbery gone wrong, a bank has gone wrong,
Speaker 1: and then nefarious things unfold because of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another one where we're talking about letting someone experience
Speaker 1: the memory that they themselves have not actually formed personally
Speaker 1: based on their own experience. There is eternal sunshine in
Speaker 1: the Spotless Mind. I remember I went and saw this
Speaker 1: in the theater knowing nothing about it, Like I hadn't
Speaker 1: even seen a trailer, and it was a great experience
Speaker 1: because I didn't know what was going to happen in
Speaker 1: the movie. It didn't have a clue, and when the
Speaker 1: plot developed, spoil or alert that. It does eventually turn
Speaker 1: into a situation where there's a service in the movie
Speaker 1: that sells you the option of erasing memories, such as
Speaker 1: like the memory of an ex boyfriend or girlfriend right right,
Speaker 1: someone who you're no longer with, and you just want
Speaker 1: to wipe that from your brain entirely because it's just
Speaker 1: too painful, right like, like even the good memories, you
Speaker 1: want to get rid of them because now that you
Speaker 1: no longer have that relationship, it's just a it's painful
Speaker 1: to even recollect. So that becomes the central premise of
Speaker 1: that film. And I mean, or at least that's the
Speaker 1: kind of the instigator for things that happened within the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say the central premise really is more of a
Speaker 1: question of, you know, should we do this? Do we
Speaker 1: really want to forget the things that we think we
Speaker 1: want to forget, and wouldn't we miss those memories if
Speaker 1: once we get to that situation, wouldn't we want them back?
Speaker 1: And then, of course, another another central film in the
Speaker 1: concept of memory manipulation every bit is deep and loving
Speaker 1: is Men in Black with the neuralizer, the little the
Speaker 1: little a flash bang, a little flashy device makes you
Speaker 1: forget the last, you know, whatever, the last, however convenient
Speaker 1: it is to the plot many minutes that have just passed,
Speaker 1: so that the Men in Black can can convince everyone
Speaker 1: that it was just you know, swamp gas or an
Speaker 1: electrical disturbance rather than aliens running amuck. Yeah, and actually
Speaker 1: less you forget. The best version of this plot device
Speaker 1: in films is in the Golden Globus film Superman. For
Speaker 1: where Superman, how is it possible that, no matter what
Speaker 1: the topic is, you somehow find a way of wrapping
Speaker 1: this back to Superman for a quest for peace? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to find peace somehow. Somebody's got
Speaker 1: to do it. It's not gonna be the President, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be the Russian. It's got to be Superman.
Speaker 1: Produce your explanation and pray, make it improbable. Well, if
Speaker 1: you recall from the film, there's a scene where Superman
Speaker 1: basically reveals his identity to Lois Lane and then he
Speaker 1: wipes her memory, which it seems a abusive That also
Speaker 1: happens it that also happens in Superman too. Yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I totally forgot about it. Well, I've seen four more
Speaker 1: recently than two. That's there's so much wrong. And what
Speaker 1: you just said Superman four, by the way, one of
Speaker 1: the memories I would love to earth, that would be
Speaker 1: that would be great. But then how would you remember
Speaker 1: the bad guy with his press on nails? And I
Speaker 1: wouldn't and it would make me a happier person. But
Speaker 1: we're getting that's fair. Yeah, we've have we been on
Speaker 1: track yet. No. I think we've just talked about how
Speaker 1: how often people bring up the topic of I'd really
Speaker 1: love to create fake memories or get rid of real memories,
Speaker 1: or just strengthen memories I have because I know that
Speaker 1: there are there are conditions. There's just the process of
Speaker 1: aging where people have trouble remembering stuff, and I would
Speaker 1: like to hold onto those memories for as long as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess the question within the realm of this
Speaker 1: podcast is is it possible we could actually do that technologically.
Speaker 1: So to answer that question, first, we have to explore
Speaker 1: what exactly is a memory. Now. On one level, of
Speaker 1: memory is a recollection of some stimuli that you encountered
Speaker 1: in the past. And that sounds vague, but it's because
Speaker 1: memory is a really big topic, right and we still
Speaker 1: don't know exactly how it works all the time. The
Speaker 1: brain is a little bit mysterious, but but there is
Speaker 1: a physical process that we have more or less identified
Speaker 1: what's going on when we form and recall memories. So
Speaker 1: I'd say the brain is more than a little bit mysterious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's so. So we have a several regions of our
Speaker 1: brains right there. It's not just one big massive gray
Speaker 1: matter with no differentiation between one part in the next. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is one region called the hippocampus, which is associated
Speaker 1: with forming long term memories. It's where hippopotamuses go to college.
Speaker 1: That's actually, yes, the hippocampus would be a big hippo
Speaker 1: on campus. I don't know that you're allowed to talk anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this is part of the forebrain, and it's located
Speaker 1: inside the medial temporal lobe, and memories are made up
Speaker 1: of neurons that communicate with each other through synapses. Now,
Speaker 1: synapses are those gaps between one neuron and other neurons,
Speaker 1: And of course neurons are the basic nerve cells in
Speaker 1: the brain exactly. So in the brain we have around
Speaker 1: between you know, eighty billion and a hundred billion neurons.
Speaker 1: A single neuron can have synapses that allow it to
Speaker 1: communicate with thousands of other neurons. It's not just a oh,
Speaker 1: it can communic yeah, or even a one to a
Speaker 1: dozen thing. We're talking about the potential to uh, to
Speaker 1: communicate with hundreds or thousands of other cells. Again, depending
Speaker 1: upon the complexity of the brain we're looking at now
Speaker 1: with human brains, it's pretty darn complex. So how do
Speaker 1: neurons make memories? Do they what do they make new
Speaker 1: neurons or do they they form pathways of communication within
Speaker 1: the hippocampus. So I kind of imagine that this is oversimplifying,
Speaker 1: and and again this is base upon our current understanding
Speaker 1: of memory. Keeping in mind that we don't have a yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't have a complete picture, but they form a
Speaker 1: pathway when you encounter us a stimuli that you need
Speaker 1: to remember something, let's say it's short term memory. They
Speaker 1: end up communicating with one another through electrochemical means. That's
Speaker 1: the way neurons communicate, and in short term memory, they
Speaker 1: just do a really quick and dirty, short electrochemical response
Speaker 1: that can be repeated a couple of times as necessary
Speaker 1: for you to remember something while it's happening at the time. So,
Speaker 1: you know, short term memory where you're able to remember
Speaker 1: something for a couple of minutes, and then if you
Speaker 1: don't think about it, if you don't really try to
Speaker 1: commit it to memory, it's gone. That's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. If you want to try and convert something
Speaker 1: into a long term memory where you're trying to really
Speaker 1: remember something, trying to get a concept down, like you're
Speaker 1: studying for a test and you're you're taking you know,
Speaker 1: you're reading this one passage, then resting for a while,
Speaker 1: and then reading the passage again and making sure you
Speaker 1: understand it. This is where those that same communication pathway
Speaker 1: gets repeated, but now it's repeated with different proteins to
Speaker 1: kind of make it a more hesitate to use the
Speaker 1: word permanent, but a more stable pathway. All right, So
Speaker 1: you've got these neurons that are creating this same sort
Speaker 1: of pathway. Whenever you remember that thing that you've committed
Speaker 1: to memory, this pathway reforms, mostly because they're the actual
Speaker 1: process of remembering. It turns out that we have to
Speaker 1: forge this pathway over and over again. Whenever we're filing
Speaker 1: the memory away, we're essentially recreating the memory that was
Speaker 1: created the first time. This is something that came out
Speaker 1: of studies that were started in the nineteen sixties really
Speaker 1: and then uh, you know, it didn't get widespread um
Speaker 1: acceptance within the brain research field until later. The common
Speaker 1: thought was that once you've created a long term memory,
Speaker 1: you ended up consolidating it. That's what they called it
Speaker 1: was consolidation, and that your your memory was pretty much
Speaker 1: set like you would put it into long term memory,
Speaker 1: You're good to go. Uh. As it turns out that's
Speaker 1: not exactly what happens. You have this reconsolidation that happens
Speaker 1: where every time you are filing that memory away again
Speaker 1: so that you can recall it later, you are essentially
Speaker 1: re encoding that memory. And that means that you could
Speaker 1: alter the memory through the re encoding process, so little
Speaker 1: details could change. This might be why if you hear
Speaker 1: someone tell the same story and you've known this person forever,
Speaker 1: you you think that's not the way that story goes.
Speaker 1: They totally left out this other part, or I don't
Speaker 1: ever remember hearing this thing they said this other time.
Speaker 1: It might not be because they are trying to mislead
Speaker 1: you on purpose, but rather because they literally remember it
Speaker 1: differently exactly. The memory itself is different because the process
Speaker 1: of recalling a memory changes that memory. So as a
Speaker 1: as a related tangent, this should tell you that if
Speaker 1: the nature of memory is such that we re encode
Speaker 1: our memories every time we file them away, that tells
Speaker 1: you that relying upon memory for important stuff is not
Speaker 1: always a great idea and should perhaps not be relied
Speaker 1: upon as heavily as it is. And say, like court cases,
Speaker 1: that's a great example. Yeah, so in a court case,
Speaker 1: you know, it's we often see that people put more
Speaker 1: importance on witness testimony than they do on other types
Speaker 1: of evidence. Not. Yeah, we're not. This is obviously a generalization.
Speaker 1: It's not the case in every court case, but it's
Speaker 1: something that we see as a trend where people put
Speaker 1: the human element ends up having a greater impact on
Speaker 1: us than uh than either um, you know, things that
Speaker 1: we just have to uh conceptualize or just random pieces
Speaker 1: of information. The human element often seems to have a
Speaker 1: greater impact on us, which is unfortunate because memory is
Speaker 1: not infallible. It doesn't mean that it's completely unreliable either,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that just by the very physical
Speaker 1: nature the way memories are formed, we cannot be completely
Speaker 1: certain that what we remember is exactly what has happened. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a little worrisome or freeing, depending upon your point
Speaker 1: of view. I at this point wipe my hands of
Speaker 1: all responsibility, Like, Jonathan, you did this terrible thing. I
Speaker 1: have no memory of that, and I can be honest
Speaker 1: or at least that's not the way I remember it. Um.
Speaker 1: But but even outside of this accidental changing of memories
Speaker 1: that happens, there has been a little bit of research
Speaker 1: right into how we can purposefully alter memory absolutely and
Speaker 1: a lot of this comes from some some studies that
Speaker 1: again started in the nineteen sixties, experiments that looked at
Speaker 1: the hippocampus and the way that memories are formed. One
Speaker 1: of the things that were that we looked at was
Speaker 1: the fact that if you stimulate neurons in the hippocampus.
Speaker 1: You can make them better at communicating with each other.
Speaker 1: You can boost their ability to communicate, which means that
Speaker 1: you could help memories form more quickly, or you could
Speaker 1: reinforce a memory, reinforcing that pathway. Uh. They used the
Speaker 1: electrical stimulation, and they called the process long term potential ation,
Speaker 1: also known LTP, which is pretty much how I'm going
Speaker 1: to say it from here on out, because potential ation
Speaker 1: I trip over it pretty frequently. So long term potential
Speaker 1: ation was suspected by some to play a really important
Speaker 1: role in encoding memories, but it wasn't necessarily again accepted
Speaker 1: as a widespread concept for a while. They their brain
Speaker 1: researchers who said, well, it's obviously important, but I don't
Speaker 1: know that's the primary uh cause. And more importantly, we
Speaker 1: don't have enough direct evidence, right, because that's how science works.
Speaker 1: We can create a hypothesis, but until we test that
Speaker 1: hypothesis repeatedly and get the same result, we can't really
Speaker 1: draw a firm conclusion. That's the difference between hypothesis and theory.
Speaker 1: And even theories can change, but they are more of
Speaker 1: a kind of consolidated uh, body of information that we
Speaker 1: understand about some aspect of the universe. And they're also
Speaker 1: different from the colloquial use of the word theory, in
Speaker 1: which you can say, well, I've got a theory that
Speaker 1: it's a demon, um, but so a singing demons right there,
Speaker 1: right exactly? Anyway, Yeah, sorry, back back to any sort
Speaker 1: of buffy quote and I'm going to jump all over it.
Speaker 1: Rats at any rate. Rights. Yeah, so rats and mice, Uh,
Speaker 1: their experiments have been done with both with with LTP
Speaker 1: and forming of memories as well as erasing memories. But
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a second. So how can
Speaker 1: you tell if a mouse or a rat is remembering something?
Speaker 1: You can't really sit down with the mouse or rats.
Speaker 1: Hey do you remember that one wheel of cheese? Man?
Speaker 1: That was awesome? It doesn't really work. So one of
Speaker 1: the very common ways, here's where we get into the
Speaker 1: the part of the podcast that could very much upset
Speaker 1: some people, because we're talking about experimenting upon animals. Uh
Speaker 1: in the name of science. This is uh. One of
Speaker 1: the ways is conditioning them to fear a certain stimulus
Speaker 1: by following up that stimulus, well a little electric zap,
Speaker 1: so not enough to to really harm them enough to
Speaker 1: enough for it to be a pain stimulus. So you're
Speaker 1: usually you're talking about like a certain pitch of sound
Speaker 1: and then you follow that up with a zap. Now,
Speaker 1: rats catch onto this really quickly from what I understand,
Speaker 1: you usually only have to do it once. And then
Speaker 1: they learned to associate the sound with getting zapped. And
Speaker 1: if you play the sound again, they freeze in anticipation
Speaker 1: of the oncoming zap, So they build that memory very quickly. Um.
Speaker 1: But in order to try and test this LTP idea,
Speaker 1: what scientists would do is back in the nineties sixties,
Speaker 1: they started uh started doing this, and then they continue
Speaker 1: that into the eighties. They would establish something like the
Speaker 1: sound and the zapp, and then they would introduce some
Speaker 1: form of inhibitor that would inhibit LTP from taking place.
Speaker 1: It would either be a drug or sometimes they would
Speaker 1: introduce a gene that would inhibit lt P, and then
Speaker 1: they would observe the rats and they saw that the
Speaker 1: rats would not be able to form a memory connecting
Speaker 1: the sound to getting zapped, or they would just essentially
Speaker 1: forget like they you could play the sound and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't freeze, they didn't associate it anymore. They had forgotten
Speaker 1: that association, and that was some that was leaning more
Speaker 1: towards the evidence that LTP has this role in encoding memories,
Speaker 1: but still wasn't exactly conclusive. It was one of those
Speaker 1: things where says, all right, well, this is promising, let's
Speaker 1: continue research and seeing what else we can find. So
Speaker 1: that was the basis for that early LTP research. We'll
Speaker 1: get back to that in just a minute. Right. What
Speaker 1: might have something to do with this is something called
Speaker 1: dendrid ex spines. And there's one study in particular that
Speaker 1: came out of NY you that was about sleep and
Speaker 1: how sleep strengthens memory. That has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with this, Okay, So, um, dendrid expines are these little
Speaker 1: protrusions between neurons and they facilitate the transfer of signals
Speaker 1: across synapses. Right. They grow in mice at least in
Speaker 1: the first few hours after the mice have learned a
Speaker 1: new skill. So this is something that actually develops throughout
Speaker 1: the lifetime of the mouse as the mouse learns, you know,
Speaker 1: differential equations and right, you know how to do a
Speaker 1: Ronney dangerfield impression, that kind of thing exactly. Um, And and
Speaker 1: and they and they strengthen that memory of that skill UM,
Speaker 1: and these researchers found that these structures grow more during sleep.
Speaker 1: They trained two sets of mice at a task and
Speaker 1: then let one set sleep for seven hours and kept
Speaker 1: the others awake for seven hours. The sleep deprived mice
Speaker 1: had less dendritic spine growth. Furthermore, they tracked which brain
Speaker 1: cells activated during the learning process, and those same brain
Speaker 1: cells reactivated while the mice were asleep, UM, specifically while
Speaker 1: they were in deep sleep, which is a slow wave
Speaker 1: sleep it's sometimes called, which is when the brain waves
Speaker 1: slowed down and dreaming and and or rapid eye movement stops. This.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting for many reasons. This is some
Speaker 1: of the kind of current re search that's being done
Speaker 1: into exactly why this kind of long term memory formation happens. UM.
Speaker 1: In a separate study that was out of the Script's
Speaker 1: Research Institute, scientists UH did some of that inhibition thing
Speaker 1: that that you were talking about earlier. They inhibited the
Speaker 1: growth of dendrid expines a few days after training mice
Speaker 1: to associate methamphetamines with a few different site, touch and
Speaker 1: scent clues. Later on, the mice lost all interest in
Speaker 1: those drug associated cues. While still maintaining longer held food
Speaker 1: reward memories. So they're they're hoping that this could lead
Speaker 1: to ways of selectively removing harmful memories like related to
Speaker 1: addiction or to PTSD or something like that, while still
Speaker 1: maintaining other other memories. Yeah, So in other words, you're
Speaker 1: not doing a full system wipe. You're wiping ones that
Speaker 1: are causing uh, possible distress or problems in a person's life. Obviously,
Speaker 1: right now we're talking think about rodents, not people. And
Speaker 1: we'll we'll touch on that again in just a moment
Speaker 1: because and that's very important to remember rats brains and
Speaker 1: human brains in most cases. Yeah, but we've got some
Speaker 1: different stuff going on for most human beings. It's true
Speaker 1: there may be exceptions at any rate moving on. So
Speaker 1: that's a great point, and we'll reiterate that when we
Speaker 1: get to a little bit further along in our podcast.
Speaker 1: We wanted to talk about another concept that's going to
Speaker 1: fold into this, optogenetics. Yeah, I thought this was really interesting.
Speaker 1: So optogenetics is a fairly new tool in neuroscience, and
Speaker 1: it's when you genetically engineer cells, which in this case
Speaker 1: would be neurons brain cells, to become light sensitive, so
Speaker 1: you can either activate them or inhibit their activity with
Speaker 1: light with light waves, making it much easier to study
Speaker 1: and manipulate these cells. So it's a really simple on
Speaker 1: and off s which as opposed to the complex neurochemicals
Speaker 1: and electrical signals that normally happen in a brain exactly. So,
Speaker 1: for one example, you can make neurons light sensitive by
Speaker 1: adding proteins called and I hope I'm pronouncing this right
Speaker 1: channel rhodopsins sounds good to me, abbreviated the two different
Speaker 1: kinds of them, c HR one and c HR two um,
Speaker 1: and you'll see these pop up sometimes in studies of optogenetics.
Speaker 1: These proteins occur naturally in algae, a certain type of
Speaker 1: algae that use light sensitive spots to help steer themselves
Speaker 1: towards sunlight and water. They've got these flagella and they
Speaker 1: operate moving toward the light when the light strikes the spot.
Speaker 1: But once animal neurons are upgraded with for example c
Speaker 1: HR two, blue light triggers action potentials in those neurons.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you can target specific cells and
Speaker 1: turn them on whenever you want. And this is a
Speaker 1: really revolutionary research tool since it gives researchers unprecedented control
Speaker 1: and precision in studying how different cells in the brain work.
Speaker 1: You can target really really really specific processes and single
Speaker 1: those out to see what they do. It's it's a
Speaker 1: little it's a little weird too, because it's almost like, hey, y'all,
Speaker 1: watch what happens when I push this button. So they
Speaker 1: said button, you're talking about regions of an animal's brain.
Speaker 1: So uh. And on a similar test, the University of California,
Speaker 1: San Diego had a research team that was looking into
Speaker 1: using optogenetics to further study the relationship between LTP and
Speaker 1: UH encoding memories. And in this case, they got one
Speaker 1: of those genes that produces a light sense of protein.
Speaker 1: They put that into a virus. They then injected the
Speaker 1: virus into rat brains, which infected the neurons and transmitted
Speaker 1: this this gene to the neurons. So the neurons would
Speaker 1: end up having this light sense of protein in them
Speaker 1: as well. So by again exposing the neurons to light
Speaker 1: the form of a fiber opt cable that was surgically
Speaker 1: implanted in the rat sprain, they could stimulate those neurons
Speaker 1: and thus stimulate LTP um or they could use a
Speaker 1: different set of pulses of light that would inhibit LTP.
Speaker 1: In fact, it it would stimulate what's called long term
Speaker 1: depression or lt D. It's kind of like the opposite
Speaker 1: of LTP. Lt D allows you to sort of um
Speaker 1: wipe away some of those pathways that would represent a memory.
Speaker 1: And what they ended up doing was they targeted the
Speaker 1: pathway in the rats brains that connected the hearing uh
Speaker 1: the hearing processing center of the rats brain, with the
Speaker 1: part of the rats brain that deals with fear. And
Speaker 1: the reason for this was that they would stimulate the
Speaker 1: neurons in the rats brain so it would simulate a
Speaker 1: the rat hearing a sound. They didn't play a sound,
Speaker 1: They just shine a light on that part of the
Speaker 1: rats brain, so the rat would remember sound exactly it
Speaker 1: had heard a sound, and followed that up, of course,
Speaker 1: with the requisite mild electric shock, meaning that when they
Speaker 1: would do that again shining the light on the rats brains,
Speaker 1: the rats would freeze just as if they had heard
Speaker 1: the sound, but they're reacting to a totally new type
Speaker 1: of stimulus. There's there's no actual physical sound being played,
Speaker 1: So that was already kind of a breakthrough. Now, then
Speaker 1: they would use these pulses of light to induce lt
Speaker 1: D and effectively a race that association with the simulated
Speaker 1: sound and the electric shock. So when they would quote
Speaker 1: unquote play the stimulated sound again, the rats wouldn't react
Speaker 1: because they had forgotten. They no longer remembered that that
Speaker 1: meant they were about to get zapped again. So this
Speaker 1: study is being looked at as yet another kind of
Speaker 1: strong evidence for the relationship between LTP and encoding memory.
Speaker 1: Uh not saying again that there aren't other lecular elements
Speaker 1: at play when you get to encoding memory, but that
Speaker 1: LTP does play a very important role, and that's really
Speaker 1: why this research was covered so extensively. Um. Although I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the coverage was more about, hey,
Speaker 1: we can make rats remember and forget stuff, which is true,
Speaker 1: they actually did do it over and over essentially. One
Speaker 1: one article I said I read said they were playing
Speaker 1: yo yo with the rats memories, So, yeah, you remember,
Speaker 1: you forget, you remember, you forget um, like how Superman
Speaker 1: treats Lois Lane. Yeah, yeah, they were. They were giving
Speaker 1: only in the only in those movies. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: giving them the rats the kiss of forgetfulness and then
Speaker 1: reminding them, Hey, you know what that sound means, right,
Speaker 1: so I'm superman. Smooch, I'm Superman again. Smoot. The real
Speaker 1: problem was that Lois Lane kept forgetting other things like
Speaker 1: they're when the piano lessons. All right, well, moving on
Speaker 1: to other things things to remember we you know, Lauren
Speaker 1: mentioned the potential of using this These the basic building
Speaker 1: blocks we're learning today in future therapies, and uh, and
Speaker 1: that is promising. It is something that would happen. If
Speaker 1: it does happen, it's going to happen years or decades
Speaker 1: in the future because memory is very complex, and again,
Speaker 1: rhett brains and human brains aren't identical. And also the
Speaker 1: methods that we're talking about right now tend to be
Speaker 1: fairly invasive or require some some pretty extreme measures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like you're either talking about genetic engineering, so
Speaker 1: you need to design this baby to be like this
Speaker 1: from the time it's a kid, or like introducing a
Speaker 1: virus to an adult, not to mention an optical fiber
Speaker 1: implanted in their brain, which would theoretically be connected to
Speaker 1: something that could produce the light necessary to shine on
Speaker 1: the neurons. It's not something that is, it's not a
Speaker 1: noninvasive procedure in that case, right, right, Even some of
Speaker 1: the studies that I was talking about you would be discussing,
Speaker 1: you know, inducing or inducing a lack of protein growth
Speaker 1: in the brain after memories had been formed so that
Speaker 1: they could not form these dendrid expines. And this is
Speaker 1: this is dangerous stuff, as what we're saying, so I
Speaker 1: don't want to play around with it in a person.
Speaker 1: That being said, it's possible that the stuff we're learning
Speaker 1: today will lead eventually to some very useful therapies, not
Speaker 1: just in helping treat people who have postramatic stress disorder
Speaker 1: or an addiction and they want to break, you know,
Speaker 1: they want to break those those neural pathways that are
Speaker 1: associated with forming a habit, which could in theory be
Speaker 1: really really useful, but also for things like strengthening memories
Speaker 1: for people who have a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's where
Speaker 1: they might have trouble, or someone who suffered a stroke,
Speaker 1: even uh, some people who might have trouble getting access
Speaker 1: to those this kind of information could help us perhaps
Speaker 1: in the future, rebuild these connections that were once thought
Speaker 1: to be completely lost. So people connect regain memories that
Speaker 1: they didn't even know they had. And that's the real
Speaker 1: trick about memory, right you can't remember what you don't
Speaker 1: what you've already forgotten. It's you can't. Although you know,
Speaker 1: outside of UM degenerative brain disorders like that, there is
Speaker 1: a place for losing memories. It's actually an important part
Speaker 1: of the of the brain process. I argue this all
Speaker 1: the time with my wife and she does not believe me. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so do you still remember Superman? For Unfortunately, that one
Speaker 1: has stayed with me and every time I bring it up,
Speaker 1: I'm strengthening that connection. Well, there's another connection that's happening
Speaker 1: right now that's associated with you, Joe, and I think
Speaker 1: you might want to tread lightly before you continue done
Speaker 1: this path. I'm talking about some specific research that was
Speaker 1: done I was done at the University of British Columbia
Speaker 1: that indicates that when connections between neurons are too strong
Speaker 1: that they call it sticky UM. That means that the
Speaker 1: new things are difficult to learn. UM, that it becomes
Speaker 1: more difficult for us to modulate our behavior and and
Speaker 1: adapt to changes. Stuff like that. That's really interesting. I
Speaker 1: also think that you know, we didn't really cover this
Speaker 1: in our notes, but it kind of leads into that
Speaker 1: also the idea of uh, of facilitating education. You know
Speaker 1: the fact that memory and and and learning are very
Speaker 1: closely connected. Things like can you imagine being able to
Speaker 1: use sort of these techniques to to strengthen our brain
Speaker 1: when learning something like a new language and uh, something
Speaker 1: that is very well, something that is easier for younger
Speaker 1: people to do than it is for old fogies like me,
Speaker 1: who it's not that I can't learn a new language,
Speaker 1: it's just that it's gonna take me more effort to
Speaker 1: do something that a younger person will pick up much
Speaker 1: more quickly. UM. I could see this kind of research
Speaker 1: eventually leading to techniques that would allow us to facilitate
Speaker 1: learning in different stages of our life, so that it's
Speaker 1: one of those you know, we can regain that plasticity
Speaker 1: that we have when we're younger and really uh and
Speaker 1: apply that to whatever it is we're interested in when
Speaker 1: we're older. Again, this is stuff that we're talking about
Speaker 1: years and years and decades into the future, because there's
Speaker 1: so much about the brain we don't understand and that
Speaker 1: we don't even know we don't know that it's going
Speaker 1: to take some time before we can even address this
Speaker 1: in a remotely experimental way, much less in a widespread
Speaker 1: like you know you go to the learning store and
Speaker 1: get yourself some French lessons. So if you guys out
Speaker 1: there who have been listening to this podcast think, hey,
Speaker 1: I always wanted to ask this one question, but I
Speaker 1: keep forgetting to do it. Now is the time to remember.
Speaker 1: And if you do remember what it was that you
Speaker 1: wanted to ask, but you don't remember how to contact us,
Speaker 1: I'll remind you Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, all great avenues
Speaker 1: to explore. Use the handle FW thinking to find us.
Speaker 1: And we look forward to hearing from you, and we'll
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