Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. All Right,
Speaker 1: we were just talking about this. Everyone has this memory
Speaker 1: or generally more than one, mary that like some sort
Speaker 1: of embarrassment from the past and enters your mind. And
Speaker 1: what happens. You just curl up in a fetal position
Speaker 1: because it's such an awful memory and you just think,
Speaker 1: why why I was just sitting here, I was just
Speaker 1: doing the laundry, and then you just struck out of
Speaker 1: nowhere and this memory. And I won't describe it because
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's awful and embarrassing. Yeah, it haunts
Speaker 1: me year after year. Yeah, I don't happen to me.
Speaker 1: I'll think of like something that I said it was
Speaker 1: just really stupid once. Um. Generally not on on this podcast,
Speaker 1: you know, but but something to see. I think of
Speaker 1: the things I say on this podcast and not crimming time,
Speaker 1: but you know it, Okay, It'll enter my mind and
Speaker 1: I'll find myself having to um kind of like do
Speaker 1: a la la la la la, I can't hear you
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. We're all we're all combat it
Speaker 1: with just like a really nonsense phrase like and then
Speaker 1: he turned into a goat. Like that used to be
Speaker 1: a staple where I would think of something something embarrassing
Speaker 1: in the past, and it would be like, and then
Speaker 1: he turned into a goat, and then he turned into
Speaker 1: a goat, and that would like the image of something
Speaker 1: turning into a goat would help rid myself of of
Speaker 1: self stabbing with that memory. Well, not only is that
Speaker 1: a tip, but a little insight into the mind of
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. Goat turn absolutely good. I'm richly amused by them.
Speaker 1: I see that. But yeah, this this is the problem,
Speaker 1: and I think that some people would willingly undergo their
Speaker 1: memories or specific memories being erased if they could. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what if you could go in and say, all right,
Speaker 1: instead of just having to go through this moment where
Speaker 1: I drop into a fetal position or have to think
Speaker 1: something stupid to combat something stupid, or then, how what
Speaker 1: if I could just go in and have it removed,
Speaker 1: Go into the doc and say, hey, I've got this
Speaker 1: memory I want removed, and they're like, all right, well
Speaker 1: think about it for a second. All right, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about it. Now and then whap is that it's very possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very possible. And there this is something that came
Speaker 1: up when when we were attending the World Science Festival
Speaker 1: in New York, I attended a panel of about the
Speaker 1: Unbearable Lightness of memory. And there it was just like
Speaker 1: one of these sessions where they had had a number
Speaker 1: of these guys, um and and women that were just
Speaker 1: experts in the field of memory and are just on
Speaker 1: the cutting edge of of seeing you know, of of
Speaker 1: our understanding of memory and our exploitation of that understanding.
Speaker 1: And so it was a very mind blowing a couple
Speaker 1: of hours. And this is a topic that came up
Speaker 1: and that these guys were saying, Yeah, within our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Some were saying, within the next ten years, we will
Speaker 1: have the technology to go in and selectively erase memories,
Speaker 1: because we are doing it on rats currently, um, you know,
Speaker 1: in some cases. So obviously that technology is going to
Speaker 1: find its way into the mainstream. It is just a
Speaker 1: matter of how and when and um, will we be
Speaker 1: willing to undergo and why would we which we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today, but we're going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more specifically about memories before we go into that,
Speaker 1: and we are going to talk about technology that exists
Speaker 1: now to wipe the memory in a clean fashion, not
Speaker 1: in a brain damage way, but in a rat because
Speaker 1: we all know that you can erase memories by damaging
Speaker 1: the brain. But that's that's kind of dumb. That's like
Speaker 1: saying you can erase an ink by burning the paper.
Speaker 1: That's not really erasing the baby out with the bath water,
Speaker 1: right right, So we'll get into some of that as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, first we need to talk about exactly what
Speaker 1: memory is, um, which is one of the big questions
Speaker 1: that's again it's when we're continuing to answer and one
Speaker 1: that we've been asking as long as we've had memory,
Speaker 1: as long as we've had had intelligence among the species. Well, well,
Speaker 1: let's lay down some nuts and bolts because this is
Speaker 1: going to be important in some of the discussions that
Speaker 1: we UM have later on about actually how we how
Speaker 1: we would erase a specific memory. UM. So, what is
Speaker 1: happening when you're making a memory? Basically, you have nerve
Speaker 1: cells that are communicating by sending electrical signals which trigger
Speaker 1: the release of chemicals across tying gaps called synapses. When
Speaker 1: these are the neural junctions, and then as one cell
Speaker 1: speaks to another, chemical changes at the synapse make it
Speaker 1: easier for the signal to pass. Okay, so this is important.
Speaker 1: If only a few signals are sent, this transforment transformation
Speaker 1: among a network of cells is temporary, resulting in short
Speaker 1: term memory. But if the signals keep coming through changes
Speaker 1: that the most active snaps has become permanent and they
Speaker 1: create long term memories. It is literally an anatomical change
Speaker 1: to your brain. So it's I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: if you look at it this way, different day, different brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was really fascinated by that viewpoint, the
Speaker 1: idea that that at the addition of a permanent memory
Speaker 1: is the an anatomical difference in the brain. Because we
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about before this whole question of
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out who and what we are
Speaker 1: and the brains and ability to perceive itself, even if
Speaker 1: we are completely atheistic in our in our viewpoints, even
Speaker 1: if we're just the most scientific, hard boiled I don't
Speaker 1: believe in ghosts kind of guy, you or goal I'm
Speaker 1: I'm using guy in the non gender specific I know
Speaker 1: you are, but but yeah, even if you just you know,
Speaker 1: you don't believe in any of this nonsense, you still
Speaker 1: can fall into this trap of of sort of thinking
Speaker 1: of yourself is this non corporeal thing that just happens
Speaker 1: during the bodies and we end up we end up
Speaker 1: not thinking about ourselves our memory as a physical manifestation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it is interesting to you to think of how
Speaker 1: we regard ourselves mainly by what memories are are we
Speaker 1: what shapes us? Our idea of ourselves is composed of memories,
Speaker 1: right right? Um, So knowing that memory making is really
Speaker 1: very a fragile process and um, and not as straight
Speaker 1: forward as straightforward as we thought, really sort of is
Speaker 1: a game changer and how we perceive ourselves and and
Speaker 1: just it's amazing to think that we are constructing this
Speaker 1: reality out of a really flawed process, right, because flawed
Speaker 1: in a sense. But but basically it comes down to
Speaker 1: the way we used to think about let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about that because because ultimately the way it works is
Speaker 1: the way it works, and it works that way due
Speaker 1: to um, you know, rigorous evolution, uh, and it and
Speaker 1: it is important that it works the way it works.
Speaker 1: But the way you're not not going to evolution. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that it's not as ironclad as and we thought.
Speaker 1: Our memories are ephemeral little things. Yes, and so just
Speaker 1: as an example, the old way of looking at how
Speaker 1: how memories worked, want a little something like this, you
Speaker 1: would learn something, UM, let's say you would learn that. UM.
Speaker 1: Let's let's think about what's the what's the most recent
Speaker 1: thing you learned about cicada's and their lifespan? Okay, well
Speaker 1: let's say you, um, you learned that cicadas um, some
Speaker 1: species of cicadas uh will are a thirteen year lifecycle
Speaker 1: where they go to ground for thirteen years. All right,
Speaker 1: So you learn that, all right, and then you store
Speaker 1: it and then when you go to retrieve it, you
Speaker 1: retrieve it. So it's like I take the fact, I
Speaker 1: put it in the storage drawer the brain, and then
Speaker 1: I retrieve it. And there's there's no update process going
Speaker 1: on here. This is the old model. And then if
Speaker 1: you were to say then you were suddenly to learn, oh,
Speaker 1: well there's thirteen and seventeen here. That's an addition, that's
Speaker 1: an update, but there's not really an update process going on.
Speaker 1: It's just like, oh, I'll store that memory too, well,
Speaker 1: the the current view is the reconsolidation view, and this
Speaker 1: is this is a little more complicated, and this is
Speaker 1: this is how it would go. You'll learn the fact, right, okay,
Speaker 1: cicadas years, you store the fact, all right, and then
Speaker 1: you retrieve the fact. But when you retrieve the fact, uh,
Speaker 1: it goes through up date, reconsolidation, and then it's stored again.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that every time we reach into
Speaker 1: the storage center of our brain and retrieve something, be
Speaker 1: it a little fact about Cicada's or our family history
Speaker 1: or something about ourselves, we retrieve it and we update
Speaker 1: it and then we put it back. So it's it's
Speaker 1: ever changing. There's no such thing as this memory. Like
Speaker 1: the memories are not set in stone. They are um there.
Speaker 1: They are these continued things that alter every time we
Speaker 1: touch it. It's kind of like if it we're a
Speaker 1: police case. You know, they're always talking about like the
Speaker 1: chain of um, not the chain of command. What is
Speaker 1: it with evidence? Uh, it's like a chain of possession
Speaker 1: or something. I'll give a chain of obsession. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: of our more crime oriented or police work oriented of
Speaker 1: yours will correctus on this, but but yeah, they're very
Speaker 1: concerned with with who has the control of the evidence
Speaker 1: at any given moment, because they could flowt they could
Speaker 1: they could get fingerprints on it or tamper with it
Speaker 1: in some uh some way, shape or form. So if
Speaker 1: you look at memory, like that memory, every time you
Speaker 1: get it out, somebody's getting their paws on it. I
Speaker 1: mean you're getting your paws on it. That you're adding
Speaker 1: new information to it, and some of that new information
Speaker 1: and you add may not be good information, well right, right,
Speaker 1: And when you're sharing that information, you're corroborating some of
Speaker 1: your information, right, and you're adding to it, and you
Speaker 1: know you've got the whole human experience sort of coming
Speaker 1: in and coloring that experience that memory, that data. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like here's an example. Let's see you have She's a
Speaker 1: who's a childhood friend of yours, Cheryl. All right, Let's
Speaker 1: say you when you first meet Cheryl and you're your
Speaker 1: friends with Cheryl and uh, and then you you go
Speaker 1: out roller skating and you fall down and then you're
Speaker 1: trying to go backwards again fancy, and then later on, um,
Speaker 1: you have a falling out with Cheryl and you begin
Speaker 1: to see think of Cheryl as um your enemy Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then you could conceivably retrieve that memory of you
Speaker 1: falling down pushed me exactly. You add in this new
Speaker 1: information where Cheryl is the great adversary, and and now
Speaker 1: the memory is restored in a slightly different form. Now
Speaker 1: this isn't necessarily a false memory then, has it or
Speaker 1: a cover memory? No? No, but it's potentially flawed. It's
Speaker 1: also potentially more accurate. Who knows, maybe Cheryl did push you,
Speaker 1: but it's but it's changing. What I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting is how much emotion can really determine what sort
Speaker 1: of memory you get out of an experience. And you
Speaker 1: had a really interesting um example from the panel that
Speaker 1: had to do with nine eleven. Right, Yeah, these uh,
Speaker 1: you know, neuroscientists are are kind of awesome, and they're
Speaker 1: always I mean, you can you can say that they're
Speaker 1: a little too focused on their work in this particular example,
Speaker 1: but but I think it's it's very telling. Nine eleven occurs,
Speaker 1: you know, tragic, horrible day for anyone involved. But these
Speaker 1: guys were instantly thinking, all right, this is a great example.
Speaker 1: This is a great opportunity for us to test how
Speaker 1: our memory reacts with traumatic situations. Because every because anybody
Speaker 1: you can ask that question, you know, it's like what
Speaker 1: were you doing on nine eleven? Or where were you
Speaker 1: when Kennedy was shot? For older members of the audience,
Speaker 1: you know, there would be some sort of people always
Speaker 1: have really specific answers. I was in my living room,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's not necessarily accurate, right, Yeah, they did
Speaker 1: this study where they were they were act They were
Speaker 1: checking everybody's memory, doing test on it to see how
Speaker 1: accurate their memory was of their of their like what
Speaker 1: they were wearing, what they were eating for breakfast on
Speaker 1: nine eleven versus other times, and uh, and there was
Speaker 1: there was actually less accuracy for nine eleven. And it's
Speaker 1: because there's less less activity uh in the in the
Speaker 1: pair of hippocampus, which is involved in the details, and
Speaker 1: it's um and it ends up being more of an
Speaker 1: emotional response. Amygdala is really active in this case, right,
Speaker 1: The amigdeala is the emotional seat, and that's where all
Speaker 1: the activity is of when forming these these traumatic memories,
Speaker 1: right where it's the the detail or did uh hi.
Speaker 1: Hippocampus is taking a back seat to that, and so
Speaker 1: the pair of hippocampus is noting would normally note like
Speaker 1: what you were wearing, what time it was, those sort
Speaker 1: of details. But the interesting thing is people were so
Speaker 1: sure about it, like they're like, I was totally wearing
Speaker 1: a green shirt and eating fruit loops and that was
Speaker 1: that was it. I have this clean memory, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's we basically think it is an evolutionary response, Like
Speaker 1: it's not just like some sort of flaw. It's because
Speaker 1: if you're in a situation where it maybe life or death,
Speaker 1: you may need to run for your life, you may
Speaker 1: need to make some very quick decisions in order to
Speaker 1: survive or do the right thing, your brain basically doesn't
Speaker 1: want you to care about the details. So because it's
Speaker 1: in the fear response, right right, it's it's more reacted
Speaker 1: like you got to do something, dude, don't worry what
Speaker 1: your fruit loops are doing or what your shirt you
Speaker 1: were wearing, and and so you're sure about it because
Speaker 1: it's because it's the sort of the trick of the memory,
Speaker 1: so that you're not concerned with it. Yeah, okay, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. And it also makes sense that people have
Speaker 1: are so sure about it because it was a very
Speaker 1: prominent at emotional experience, right, so it meant so much
Speaker 1: to them that they felt like, well, of course I
Speaker 1: was wearing this short and of course I remember every
Speaker 1: detail because that's how it felt to me rather than
Speaker 1: what it actually was. But why would we need to
Speaker 1: to erase the memory? Right? Yeah, I mean, we actually
Speaker 1: have some very good reasons why someone would want to
Speaker 1: undergo this process, and we'll get to that right at
Speaker 1: its quick break. This podcast is brought to you by Intel,
Speaker 1: the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel,
Speaker 1: we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join
Speaker 1: us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers to
Speaker 1: life's questions and we're back. Yeah. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: trickier question than than it may seem on the surface,
Speaker 1: because even when bad things happen to us, um, they
Speaker 1: become traumatic memories a lot of the times because we
Speaker 1: need to be able to avoid those situations in the future.
Speaker 1: We need to or just embarrassing memory. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like it was really embarrassing the time, uh you know,
Speaker 1: you got up and uh you know, it made some
Speaker 1: faux pad a meeting or something, and so you are
Speaker 1: remembering that it stings in your memory, but you're not
Speaker 1: making that same faux pas every time you go into
Speaker 1: the sub meeting, you know. So, yeah, it plays an
Speaker 1: important role. It does. You're right, and even something is something.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: went to a wedding and she decided not to wear
Speaker 1: any undy's but she had on a little other contraption
Speaker 1: and which I won't get too specific, because you know,
Speaker 1: we're a clean podcast here, But she was dancing in
Speaker 1: her dress, got caught up, and she moved the world,
Speaker 1: and you know, for the rest of her life she's thinking,
Speaker 1: always were underwear with this contraption always where, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's important, right, And that's kind of a
Speaker 1: low brow example, but still, yeah. I mean the movie
Speaker 1: that I'm sure everyone instantly thought of when they saw
Speaker 1: this podcast, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mine. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole message of that is this is where the
Speaker 1: end of they go to erase this painful breakup so
Speaker 1: they and move on with their lives. But in erasing
Speaker 1: the painful breakup, they end up falling in love with
Speaker 1: each other. In the real world, you'd end up not
Speaker 1: learning from their mistakes, right, right, she would underwear less
Speaker 1: mooning people for first of her life. And she didn't
Speaker 1: feel ashamefaced about it. Um. Still, if it starts interfering
Speaker 1: with your life, that's where it becomes an issue. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if it became an anxiety disorder, she decided not
Speaker 1: to leave her house or to ever, you know, she
Speaker 1: can even look at a pair of underwear or anything else. Um,
Speaker 1: that would be really traumatic. Right. And and of course
Speaker 1: on a more serious note, you see this a lot
Speaker 1: with people coming back from more with PTSD, and it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a horrible disorder. And the reason is
Speaker 1: because you are re experiencing the event again and again
Speaker 1: over and over. So you might want to you know,
Speaker 1: undergo some sort of uh process to alleviate that if
Speaker 1: you could. Yeah, especially when the response that it and
Speaker 1: that it that it brings up is not going to
Speaker 1: be a helpful one. Like if you're just totally freezing, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, every time a milk carton drops in the
Speaker 1: in the grocery store, or if you're you're becoming super
Speaker 1: defensive and ready to you know, karate drop something every
Speaker 1: time there's a loud noise, that's not helpful, right, Same
Speaker 1: thing with phobias in the in the same sense where
Speaker 1: if you have an extreme irrational fear and you know
Speaker 1: it's it's shuddering you in your house then and in
Speaker 1: every time that you think of a memory and you
Speaker 1: then augment it with this phobia, and then you predict
Speaker 1: the future thinking, oh, if I leave my house, this
Speaker 1: is going to happen. UM, then you would probably want
Speaker 1: to try to remediate that if it would be good
Speaker 1: to be able to do zap or up that memory
Speaker 1: as well, discussed here in just about Yeah we will
Speaker 1: um nice pun by the way. Uh. But then there's
Speaker 1: also something called residual neuropathic pain, which is a complex
Speaker 1: chronic pain state that's usually accompanied by tissue injury. And
Speaker 1: you can see this sometimes in spinal cord injuries or
Speaker 1: patients undergoing chemotherapy or people with diabetes UM. And that's
Speaker 1: when the damage nerve fibers sent incorrect signals to other
Speaker 1: pain centers. And you actually at me a really cool
Speaker 1: article about UM. Actually I think it was a blog
Speaker 1: post from the World Science Festival on pain and memory
Speaker 1: in the spinal cord and how your spinal cord is
Speaker 1: actually tagging that pain UM with the memory and calling
Speaker 1: it up. And they used an example of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you can't you slam your your hand on the door,
Speaker 1: and then for days afterwards, the neurons in your spine
Speaker 1: carry the pain signals more easily from your hand to
Speaker 1: your brain, and as a result, your hand feels more
Speaker 1: sensitive and even the lightest touch will trigger an unpleasant reaction.
Speaker 1: Two groups of scientists have found that one special molecule
Speaker 1: p mk zeta, which we'll talk about, underlies both processes,
Speaker 1: and it helps to store memories in our brains and
Speaker 1: it sensitizes neurons in our spines after a painful experience.
Speaker 1: So much of this is related to pain, memory and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Yeah, and it's going about
Speaker 1: in these cases, it's going above and beyond the simple
Speaker 1: of you know, importance of pain, which is, hey, don't
Speaker 1: do that because it's damaging your tissue, don't or be careful,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with your leg. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: beyond that and it needs to be addressed. Right yeah.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's say you have a memory you want
Speaker 1: to race. You're going to go to a pro. What
Speaker 1: are your options here? Well, one option, of course, would
Speaker 1: be cortisol curving drugs, right, yes, yes, which this was
Speaker 1: some really interesting to me. There are thirty three university
Speaker 1: students who watched a film to picking a granddaughter helping
Speaker 1: her grandfather make a birdhouse. This is all related to
Speaker 1: the cortisol, which is a stress hormone, by the way,
Speaker 1: and in the film she accidentally gets her hand caught
Speaker 1: in the saw and yeah, and so of course these
Speaker 1: thirty three university students are sitting there in an emotional distress.
Speaker 1: And even though the film had a nice happy ending
Speaker 1: and her her hand was back on um, you know,
Speaker 1: people were a little bit flamm x by it. So
Speaker 1: what researchers did after putting them through all this this
Speaker 1: dress is they collected saliva to measure cortisol again, that
Speaker 1: stress hormone. And then three days later, this is the
Speaker 1: really trippy thing about this, the volunteers were brought back
Speaker 1: to the lab and some were given a placebo, while
Speaker 1: the rest were given one of two doses of a
Speaker 1: drug that knocks back the amount of cortisol that courses
Speaker 1: through your body. And then they were asked to recall
Speaker 1: the video presentations and lo and behold the people who
Speaker 1: were on the higher dose of the inhibitor for the cortisol.
Speaker 1: The harder it was for them to remember anything at all.
Speaker 1: And they found this even four days later, Uh, the
Speaker 1: same thing when they administered the cortisol, This memory just
Speaker 1: kept fading and fading as opposed to the control group
Speaker 1: who had no cortisol, Which is really I think it's
Speaker 1: cool because you know, I have learned that cortisol, if
Speaker 1: you if you're if you have a lot of anxiety
Speaker 1: or if um, you know you're real stressed throughout the
Speaker 1: day in your cortisol levels peak can really mess with
Speaker 1: your body. In fact, is it's a big cause for
Speaker 1: people um not able to sleep or having bouts of
Speaker 1: insomnia to because it really throws your body off. Um.
Speaker 1: And if anybody's interested in reading more about that. The
Speaker 1: study was published in the August issue of Journal of
Speaker 1: Clinical end of Chronology and met about metabolism cool. Well,
Speaker 1: the other really fascinating option and this is the one
Speaker 1: that really they spent a lot of time within this
Speaker 1: uh the World Science Festival and uh and it was
Speaker 1: really like the reason I was like, oh, we gotta
Speaker 1: do a podcast about this is this substance called ZIP
Speaker 1: that they've developed. And one of the key guys involved
Speaker 1: in this is Todd Sacktor, who was at the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival to talk about this really amusic We like
Speaker 1: do we I don't know. We should never do that,
Speaker 1: um because he will come at us with the ZIP stuff.
Speaker 1: That's right, Mr Sector never mind. Yeah, ZIP is basically
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, his team was able to use
Speaker 1: ZIP to erase the memories in the brains of rats
Speaker 1: and by neutralizing this p k M zeta that we
Speaker 1: were mentioning earlier, which again it's like the glue from him.
Speaker 1: That's right. So when when we were talking about the
Speaker 1: all those uh memories really forming at the most active
Speaker 1: synastic synactic points, it's that p mk data that is
Speaker 1: the glue that is helping to solidify that memory. So
Speaker 1: that's important in this ZIP process. Yeah, they injected and
Speaker 1: they were testing it. They had like this carousel with
Speaker 1: like with one area of like this just this round area.
Speaker 1: They called it a carousel, but it's but one section
Speaker 1: of it was electrocuted. So the rat is they put
Speaker 1: it in and the rat eventually learns where not to
Speaker 1: step because we'll get a shock. Then they inject ZIP
Speaker 1: into the hippocampus and it just it cleans out even
Speaker 1: very strong memories uh, you know, ones that have been
Speaker 1: around for quite a while and suddenly the rat doesn't
Speaker 1: know where not to step it. It basically they there
Speaker 1: are different types of memories, and I should have mentioned
Speaker 1: this earlier, I guess, but um, you know, we have
Speaker 1: we have episodic memory for events, we have semantic memory
Speaker 1: for facts. We have conditioning memories, which is like the
Speaker 1: whole Pavlov's dog thing where you know, you hear a
Speaker 1: dent dog, here's a bell and start salvating because they
Speaker 1: thinks he's gonna get food. And then you have these
Speaker 1: priming memories, which are which involves the unconscious activation of memory,
Speaker 1: um kind of reminders. So ZIP basically will knock out
Speaker 1: everything but priming. And it's pretty impressive. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's impressive. It's scary. It's also uh it could be
Speaker 1: a huge help to people if used in the right way. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the really important thing here, like like I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: is that this is not brain damage. In in sactor's
Speaker 1: own words, it basically it doesn't hurt the brain. It
Speaker 1: just restores it to factory settings. Yeah. I know, but
Speaker 1: that's still kind of creepy. It is, it is creepy.
Speaker 1: I mean, no, no one has used this on a human. Um,
Speaker 1: it's really important to note them that we know of,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean, who knows what's going on out
Speaker 1: there in the world, But as far as I know,
Speaker 1: it's never been used on humans. Um, if it were
Speaker 1: the like I said that, the priming memories still be there,
Speaker 1: the sort of hind mine stuff would be there, it
Speaker 1: would't mess with any of that. But but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of like the Bourne identity, except
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to do karate like that would
Speaker 1: be that would be gone. Um, you'd have to relearn karate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd have to relearn karate. Yeah, Okay, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it. It's just crazy to think about, like,
Speaker 1: like what would that be like suddenly have that have
Speaker 1: the ZIP put into your brain and then it's just
Speaker 1: it just clears it out. Well. I mean, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, um, and this was posted on Facebook not
Speaker 1: too long ago. Uh, memory is sort of becoming a
Speaker 1: very different thing for us than it used to be
Speaker 1: thanks to the Internet. Right, It's it's not really as important.
Speaker 1: It certainly as important, right, but but for some types
Speaker 1: of things, stuff fac like learning karate. You could probably
Speaker 1: go and watch a video if you need it to,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean the Internet is very much an
Speaker 1: external memory for us um and so rebuilding your your
Speaker 1: brain or your memory. I guess on the flip side
Speaker 1: of this, you've got their racing and then you've got
Speaker 1: the Hey, how could I make it stronger? How could
Speaker 1: I access memories? You could certainly even do that through
Speaker 1: the breadcrumb trail of your social life on the Internet. Right,
Speaker 1: That would be interested, That would make for an I
Speaker 1: don't know if it would make for an interesting movie,
Speaker 1: but I can just imagine somebody like having to rediscover
Speaker 1: what their life was by going going into into their
Speaker 1: Internet accounts and yeah, what if you were horrified, which
Speaker 1: I can I cannot believe I wrote that, or you
Speaker 1: know who, who are these people? Or wow, that person
Speaker 1: is awesome. Well, there's a there's a number of eco
Speaker 1: novel um and I forget the name of it off hand.
Speaker 1: It's the it's uh, not his most recent one that
Speaker 1: deals with like the Bridges of Prague or something, which
Speaker 1: I don't think is out in English yet, but the
Speaker 1: one proceeding that has to do with someone who loses
Speaker 1: their memory and I think they reclaim it by looking
Speaker 1: at like going and looking at the things they read
Speaker 1: in comic books and whatnot. But but again I haven't
Speaker 1: read that one yet. Yeah. Well, and then again on
Speaker 1: the flip side that p mks data can actually be
Speaker 1: used to strengthen memories too. That's another thing that they discovered.
Speaker 1: They were able to put the more pkm zeta into
Speaker 1: a Rats brain and its memory would improve. And also
Speaker 1: it means ZIP is one of these things where no
Speaker 1: one is saying, like, we got this thing called ZIP,
Speaker 1: let's figure out things to use it for, and let's
Speaker 1: star using it on people and more rats. Uh No.
Speaker 1: But but the process going on there tells us a
Speaker 1: lot about what's going on with memory. And we can
Speaker 1: learn a lot from the from these experiments involving ZIP
Speaker 1: and Rats. Well, and I always I'm interested in an
Speaker 1: experiment when when something unintentional and unintentional happens and it's
Speaker 1: a big breakthrough, like Okay, here's p mk zeta, let's
Speaker 1: let's try to zap it. Oh, by the way, we
Speaker 1: could also um instead of trying to lessen the amount
Speaker 1: of pichemist zeta, we could also bolster the memory and
Speaker 1: make it even better by injecting much more of this. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier the the the whole retrieval and reconsolidation process,
Speaker 1: and there there's a line of thinking that this may
Speaker 1: be the key to erasing a memory, in that we
Speaker 1: recall the memory, we we take it out of the
Speaker 1: storage area, and we have it, and then we change
Speaker 1: it and we put it back. It's and it's reconsolidated.
Speaker 1: The new information is reconsolidated into it. And this again,
Speaker 1: this is not this is not a cheapening of anything.
Speaker 1: This is not a this is not a flaw in
Speaker 1: the grand design. It's like, by necessity, we live in
Speaker 1: a world, as we said before, of multiple changing objects
Speaker 1: and symbols. You need to be able to navigate this world,
Speaker 1: so you need a brain that can update, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like if you if you're like me
Speaker 1: and you haven't bothered to plug your GPS system for
Speaker 1: your car into a computer since you bought it, Like
Speaker 1: roads are changing and and you occasionally encounter a new
Speaker 1: road and uh, and the device is like, I don't
Speaker 1: know where you are. You're in the middle of a field.
Speaker 1: I guess our brains don't need to work like that
Speaker 1: we need to be able to update with new information
Speaker 1: from the office. When yeah, it's like that. So but
Speaker 1: they think that when we when are when during this
Speaker 1: retrieval phase, the memory may be vulnerable to so elective deletion.
Speaker 1: The idea of being it's kind of like like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's wait, let's watch what the brain's doing. All right,
Speaker 1: he's getting the memory out of the drawer. He hasn't
Speaker 1: in his hands, and then bam, shatter it and then
Speaker 1: it's gone. Okay. So every time you take the memory
Speaker 1: out and you take it for a walk, so to speak,
Speaker 1: you're adding to it, but you're also taking away, right
Speaker 1: and and in that moment, they think, during that reconsolidation process,
Speaker 1: if we can develop a way to to to target specifically,
Speaker 1: that would be that this would be how you would
Speaker 1: do it, like and it would probably be a situation
Speaker 1: where you would have to think about the memory where
Speaker 1: they would be like, all right, start thinking about that
Speaker 1: memory of such and such and and only think about it.
Speaker 1: But even that is fraught with peril because how do
Speaker 1: you know that that's the version of the of the
Speaker 1: memory that you're trying to You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: If each time you take it out, and the reality
Speaker 1: of that memory becomes even more distorted. How do you
Speaker 1: know if that's the point at which you want to
Speaker 1: delete that memory, or at least that portion of it. Well,
Speaker 1: because you don't really have any control about what you're
Speaker 1: determining the memory to be. Come, I don't know, a
Speaker 1: little more hot water because the baths too cold, a
Speaker 1: little more cold, a lot of because the baths too hot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and then eventually the bath is overflowing. But
Speaker 1: and this is probably why this is not going to
Speaker 1: come online anytime soon for humans, right or The other
Speaker 1: thing that I think about two is kind of like
Speaker 1: a Ghostbuster situation. Do you remember the end of Ghostbusters?
Speaker 1: But the second one? Not the second one goes my favorite,
Speaker 1: and don't don't judge, I actually like the second one
Speaker 1: as well. I'm not one of those Ghostbusters two haters.
Speaker 1: But but Ghostbusters one at the end of it party
Speaker 1: in the street, well no, no, before that, when Gooser
Speaker 1: appears as the supermodel, the pink supermodel on the top
Speaker 1: of the building, all right, and they blast Goeser, but
Speaker 1: Ghoes is not dead, and Ghoser says, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: going to destroy the world. But the next thing you
Speaker 1: think about is the form I'm going to take. That's
Speaker 1: going to be the form of the destructor. So everyone's like,
Speaker 1: don't think of anything, don't think of the thing, don't
Speaker 1: give this monster anything to me. And then dan Ackroyd's
Speaker 1: character thinks of the step of marshmallow Man like ends
Speaker 1: up trying to think of something in scent, and that
Speaker 1: becomes the form of the destructor. So in this situation,
Speaker 1: this hypothetical but probable future situation where someone is brought
Speaker 1: into and they have to think of the their traumatic memory,
Speaker 1: the memory they want to race, like, think of that breakup,
Speaker 1: think of that time that um that you were covered
Speaker 1: in chocolate as a child and a goat lift you like,
Speaker 1: think of that and goat again. Think of that memory
Speaker 1: and we'll erase it. And then you're like thinking over
Speaker 1: like goat looking at me, goat looking at me. And
Speaker 1: then you're like, did a goat really? You know? But
Speaker 1: I saw a terrified child at a petting zoo once
Speaker 1: that had covered like one of these awful kids that
Speaker 1: had like had cut chocolate all over, hitting him or
Speaker 1: herself and was just acting out and then walked into
Speaker 1: the petting zoo where the goats were, and this like
Speaker 1: enormously pregnant goat was like, oh man, that's what I
Speaker 1: wanted exactly, And so the kids just freaking out, like
Speaker 1: the goat is scaring to give me, and I was,
Speaker 1: I was ritually amused. But that was probably traumatic with
Speaker 1: the kid. But I just want to make that distinction
Speaker 1: that you were not a chocolate covered child. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: And I was just I was just witnessing it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I can imagine somebody, you know, having to think of this,
Speaker 1: this traumatic memory, and then for a second they screw
Speaker 1: up and they think of something favorable from their past.
Speaker 1: They think of like their mom's uh, you know, apple pie,
Speaker 1: or they think of you know, fishing with dad or something,
Speaker 1: or or they they or something like their own phone
Speaker 1: number or something important, and then zip, that one gets
Speaker 1: destroyed by accident, and you're still stuck with the one
Speaker 1: you wanted to get rid of, right, and you're like, great, thanks,
Speaker 1: that was a great valuable memory. And now my friend
Speaker 1: is still sick with the memory of dance around moon
Speaker 1: and everybody. Yeah, and she no longer remembers her mom's name. Yeah, yeah, bum, Well,
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with this quote, Um, that
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting. And uh, this is from
Speaker 1: Douglas Fields, who's a neuroscientist, and he talks about how
Speaker 1: important it is that we do forget things. Um, so
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about memory retrieval, strengthening memories, forgetting them.
Speaker 1: He says, like a midas cursed by how think his
Speaker 1: wish granted that everything he touched would turn to gold.
Speaker 1: Permanent retention of memories could be debilitating. This is because
Speaker 1: forgetting it's just as important for learning as memory. Just
Speaker 1: as you have talked about, bad habits could not be overcome,
Speaker 1: skills would not be improved, Information such as as an
Speaker 1: old address or phone number could not be updated, and
Speaker 1: traumatic events would never fade from the horror that overwhelms
Speaker 1: a person immediately after the trauma exactly. So it is
Speaker 1: it is important to scrub the mind. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: will leave everyone with this quote because, Um, you can't
Speaker 1: help but think of all the ways that something like
Speaker 1: ZIP could be misused, just even today. Someone could use
Speaker 1: ZIP on somebody after like robbing a bank, so they
Speaker 1: wouldn't remember the details, or it could be used in
Speaker 1: various espenage situations at the corporate as well. At the
Speaker 1: World Science Festival. They asked Taught Sactride has has the
Speaker 1: as they said, has the Pentagon contacted you? And he
Speaker 1: todd Sacktric thinks for a second. He says, not that
Speaker 1: I recall. Oh, I like it up. Yeah, because that
Speaker 1: really leaves you hang in Yeah yeah, oh boys, t Sack,
Speaker 1: he's wildy. Yeah. Of course if he'd really they'd really
Speaker 1: use zip on in his response would have been something like,
Speaker 1: who are all you people? What am I doing? Yeah? So, hey,
Speaker 1: if you have any cool thoughts on this particular topic
Speaker 1: and have or have questions about memory, because I'm hoping
Speaker 1: to do at least one more stemming from this, uh,
Speaker 1: this particular World Science Festival lecture, let us know. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We are Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind on both of those and we're always updating
Speaker 1: those seeds with different stuff on each feed. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: links to lots of cool articles, lots of interesting videos,
Speaker 1: and of course in our own blog posts and podcast topics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you have ever successfully, like d I wide
Speaker 1: your own memory eraser, please let us know about it,
Speaker 1: um or if you have any other thoughts to share
Speaker 1: with us, You can find us blew the Mind at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
Speaker 1: our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Speaker 1: staf Work staff as we explore the most promising and
Speaker 1: perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.