which one would it be your graduation
day your wedding day or perhaps or some
that one fine day when your favorite
football team finally wins the league on
the other hand if you could erase one
memory which one would it be a bad
breakup or some awfully embarrassing
situation such as throwing up on your
boyfriend after first meeting his
well these and other memories define us
they give us sense of who we are in the
world they give us our past as well as
the future yet numerous neuropsychiatric
disorders have been linked to some form
of memory impairments such as amnesia
Alzheimer’s disease schizophrenia
depression post-traumatic stress
disorder and many others it is therefore
essential to study the ways in which we
can improve these memory deficits
associated with these conditions but can
we can we somehow enhance the wanted
memories and perhaps delete the ones we
don’t actually want well in science
fiction we can in the Matrix movie the
main protagonist proclaimed I know
cumaru after a brief session of a lot of
uploading the martial art skills onto
his brain in another movie Eternal
Sunshine of the spotless mind the main
protagonists decided to completely erase
the memory of their ex-partner it is a
very exciting idea to think that we will
be able to manipulate our memories in
the future in such a way but can we is
our science as good can we as does the
knowledge of our brain reach so far as
to being able to identify a specific
memory and then edited according to how
we want it well
some scientists including me believe
that something as commonplace as sleep
could be the key to enhancing our memory
and that’s because sleep has been shown
to play an important role in the
consolidation or saving of our memories
an especially slow wave sleep has been
shown to play an important role in this
process but before I move on to tell you
more about slow-wave sleep and
consolidation and how we can use these
to enhance and change our memories
I’ll just firstly tell you what we
actually how we actually get information
about our sleep we are interested in
brain activity electrical brain activity
and we study this we find out
information about our brains activity by
placing electrodes on our scalp as you
can see me on the picture of Ed my work
actually and brain activity during the
sleep and during wake there are very two
different things really in the waking
State our brains are very active and the
whole and the activity is kind of
chaotic and all over the place but then
during sleep everything just kind of
slows down and the whole rein plays the
same slow tune and during this slow wave
sleep the consolidation happens and and
the consolidation is important because
it allows for transfer of memories from
the short-term stores in the brain into
the long-term stores of the brain and to
better explain the process of the memory
transfer from one area of the brain to
another I’ll give you an example a
metaphor sort of consider your post
office in order for you to receive a
letter from your post office the post
will firstly temporarily hold your
letter in some kind of temporary storage
facility and in parallel in our brains
this temporary storage facility is an
area called hippocampus it’s a
Tinie see your shape structure essential
for the memory processes and their your
letter is received selected and sent
somewhere to your home address in the
wider brain where the information is
stored for long term use interestingly
this process of memory transfer from one
area to another it’s easier during your
sleep there’s less traffic on the
streets of your brain and the post
office does not receive any new
information in this time point and
interestingly in the last 10 years or so
researchers managed to actually tap onto
this process of memory transfer from one
area to another they were able to change
the mode of transportation of this post
from the regular mode and make it more
into a Ferrari like process to make the
process more efficient and they do this
using several techniques such as
acoustic stimulation or or factory
stimulation and now let’s finish with
the post office metaphor and I’ll tell
you more about these two techniques my
favorite part so first let’s start with
the first one olfactory stimulation just
imagine you are visiting the sleep
laboratory for an experiment as a
volunteer the researcher will give you a
task testing our memory such as Lister
you’ll have to memorize a list of words
and after during then during some parts
of the task during some trials you will
be presented with a certain fragrance
such as smell of rose and after you’re
finished with this learning part you’re
just loved to go to bed and sleep and
then at some point during the night
you’ll be presented with the same smell
again and this effectively causes your
brain to react in a way which replace
the same activation patterns which it
had during the previous learning session
and in the morning you’re more likely to
remember more information than if the
if the smell was not presented to you at
night and this type of technique is
termed as targeted memory reactivation
because your memories are artificially
reactivated by these cues or factory
cues during the night and the second
type of technique works very very much
on the same principle except now the
olfactory cues are substituted with the
sound cues such as this one and in more
recent years scientists advanced this
technique even further and they show
that we actually don’t need to use any
cues during the learning part it’s
in exactly two moments of the slow-wave
sleep and if we do this effectively this
causes your brainwaves to be more
efficient again and overall in the
morning you’re more likely to remember
about 10% more information and
interestingly this was shown to work
even in older population where people
are more likely to remember about 26%
more words then if the sons were not
presented to them this is very
encouraging news because many of us will
experience some form of memory loss as
we age and so this form of sleeping
therapy might be just what our brains
need to keep those memories alive so
this acoustic stimulation and olfactory
stimulation they work on our memories in
general they enhance our memory in
general and actually we’re still quite
far from being able to identify a
specific memory in our brain and then be
able to edit it and part of the problem
is that we actually don’t know where
these memories are localized exactly
they are probably distributed across the
whole brain but in animal research we
see some advances already for example in
genetically modified mice
using light beam researchers were able
to effectively turn on and off a mouse’s
fear memory at their will and of course
this research is valuable and intriguing
but we cannot directly apply it to
humans it would be kind of difficult to
genetically modify them and then change
their memories so we will have to come
up with new and different techniques of
how we can actually attain this but even
if we reach this goal and I able to
select that one memory which we want to
when I put my researcher side away for a
moment I must I must admit that I’m
actually a little afraid of this
technology because inevitably it brings
important ethical considerations as we
humans are very good at misusing the
potential of new technologies should we
even try to attain it and a good example
of how the memory manipulation
technology can be misused was shown in
another movie in Total Recall there the
protagonist had his memory completely
replaced was given a new name but the
changes in his memory that took total
confusion of himself in the end he
simply did not know who he was so does
that mean that we should give up on this
technology completely well I don’t think
so
despite the possible risks I still
believe that the benefits may outweigh
the costs especially if we can create a
set of clear ethical boundaries of this
technology I envision a future where
you’ll be may able to make an
appointment at sleep and memory clinic
and for example if you might decide
never to forget a face of a deceased
loved one if you are a war veteran or a
rape victim you might decide to forget
your horrible experience
and erase the trauma completely or if
you are recently diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease you may wish to
update your memories repeatedly to delay
the progression of the disorder in order
to keep your past to keep yourself so
the goal of this talk was to introduce
you to the idea that science is slowly
converging with science fiction India in
the area of manipulate memory
manipulations and I sincerely hope that
our signs will eventually catch up with
science fiction and that our lives and
memories will be improved by our favorite thing sleep