Scientists have demonstrated the successful implementation of a prosthetic system that uses a person's own memory patterns to facilitate the brain's ability to encode and recall memory.
…In the pilot study, published in today’s Journal of Neural Engineering, participants’ short-term memory performance showed a 35 to 37 percent improvement over baseline measurements.
“This is the first time scientists have been able to identify a patient’s own brain cell code or pattern for memory and, in essence, ‘write in’ that code to make existing memory work better, an important first step in potentially restoring memory loss,” said the study’s lead author Robert Hampson, Ph.D., professor of physiology/pharmacology and neurology at Wake Forest Baptist.
…“We showed that we could tap into a patient’s own memory content, reinforce it and feed it back to the patient,” Hampson said. "Even when a person’s memory is impaired, it is possible to identify the neural firing patterns that indicate correct memory formation and separate them from the patterns that are incorrect. We can then feed in the correct patterns to assist the patient’s brain in accurately forming new memories, not as a replacement for innate memory function, but as a boost to it.
What do you think this will mean for society? How will memory competitions test for prosthetic memory in 20-30 years from now?
Being more of a realist, I think it means scary developments are in the future:
AI & memory control & drugs which prevent (or slow down aging) & genetic engineering & brain/machine interface & …
Well, the study reports that they are able to identify normal patterns vs abnormal ones and filter out the abnormals one, reinforcing the normal patterns. It does not say that this will have a benefit for someone who does not experience abnormal brain patterns due to a disease like Alzheimers. So maybe there will be no change for memory competitions, but it could certainly change a lot of peoples lives for the better.
I agree with ptken’s assessment of what the researchers were trying to achieve.
Here’s a brief summary of how I think the technique works.
The test subjects were asked to memorize simple images.
-Some of the results were correct, and some were incorrect.
-The USC team “analyzed the recordings from the correct responses and synthesized a MIMO-based code for correct memory performance.” In other words, the code was based only on correct responses. The incorrect responses were discarded.
Each subject had her own code, based on her own recordings. [1]
-During the image recall task, the Wake FB team played back the synthesised code to each subject, with each subject having her own code. [1]
-As a result, the subjects “showed a 37% improvement over baseline” for episodic memory.
The same series of operations were repeated for “highly distinctive photographic images”.
Finally, the subjects were shown sets of three images. Each set contained previously unseen images, and images from the first two tests. (All this is speculation on my part. As usual in these treatises, the English is fuzzy and ambiguous, and would be banned in real-life, private companies. But I still think these researchers do a good job.)
Subjects showed a 35% improvement in memory over baseline.
IMHO these results will not apply to the memory gladiators. These guys start with good memories, and attempt to make them better.
On the other hand, people with head injuries or Alzheimer’s have some good recollections and some poor recollections. I think the researchers hope that by synthesizing a code based on the good recollections, sufferers will be able to boost their poor recollections.
[1] These are my own words, based on this quote, which was presented almost as an afterthought, about half-way down the page: “We showed that we could tap into a patient’s own memory content, reinforce it and feed it back to the patient,” Hampson said.. In other words, it’s one code for each person. It seems to me that statement should be nearer the beginning of the report. Otherwise, I was initially under the impression that a SINGLE code was produced by consolidating the correct responses of ALL the subjects, with the incorrect responses being discarded. Somehow a single code didn’t make any sense to me. Anyway, maybe that’s what it actually is. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
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