Good grief. I just read in the newspaper that, in order to "help" people lose weight, they're thinking about implanting something in the brain to make people think that certain foods made them sick as children. In their tests, it's worked, and some of them really believe that strawberry ice cream did make them sick as kids. They can't even discriminate between "what I perceive to be true" and a true memory.
You can read the article here:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/02/MNG9GE1FLN1.DTL
Real life version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
That *is* creepy. It reminds me of this article about how scientists are testing drugs that interfere with the brain's storage of memories:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4722225.stm
They say they can use it to blot out painful memories for people with post-traumatic stress.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in some strange science fiction world.
Science fiction, indeed! I still can't make myself believe that cloning can really happen.
The article you linked to, Jennifer, answers one question we had when we were talking about the other one....can scientists take away memories, or just add them? The answer would be that they can't take them away, but they can block them. When I was telling the rest of my family about the diet thing, Zachary could hardly contain his excitement. "That is so..." and was about to say "cool" but then changed it to weird, I think because he could tell that I thought it to be reprehensible. "You could use it with crimininals! You could tell them that they don't commit crimes, that they do good things instead of bad things!"
There are so many possibilities. That's why it is SO scary to me!
Post a Comment