Monday, April 13, 2009

The slippery slope of memory editing

There was an interesting story in The New York Times on breakthroughs by neuroscientists in eliminating memories. The simplified process is this: add a chemical called ZIP to a specific part of your brain and the connectors needed to retain a certain memory are eliminated. The doctors and scientists working on this say that it could do wonders for people with post-traumatic stress, addictions, phobias and memory loss. The story really is fascinating and worth a read.
A Wired magazine reporter talked to an ethicist about all of the potential unforeseen consequences, one being small, false memories could be created. This is worth a few minutes to read too.

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