UNLearning one memory at a time? Mice can!

Since you may have caught my recent podcast UNLearning: the New Skill of the Future, I thought you’d get a kick out of this recent article in [email protected] reporting that scientists have successfully used a drug on mice that "...can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact. A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact." 

One possible (and positive) use for humans would be to eliminate particularly disruptive and fearful memories, such as those that cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This research is also helping us to understand how various parts of the brain work, along with their association to specific memory, thinking, actions, and capabilities. This research can also help in our quest to improve our overall learning capabilities.

And for a more irreverent approach to this news item, you might want check out Episode 55 of “Cranky Geeks” with John Dvorak. If you can make it through the first minute or so, you’ll see that they make some good points and references to movies and stories about the dangerous side of memory erasing.

As is often the case with science fiction and other fictional stories, the recent movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may not be too far off from reality. As is usually the case, new capabilities can be used for wonderfully positive purposes as well as equally frightening and scary ends. However, let’s remind ourselves that WE make the decisions, not the technology or the ideas. We can be both the problem and the solution.  Not sure I’d want it any other way.

For now though, I prefer to stick to more unaided means of obtaining the critical skill of UNLearning now and  in the future. On the other hand, I am also convinced that some, perhaps the majority, of the most significant improvements we are going to see in our abilities to learn, unlearn, and relearn over the next 25+ years, will be from neuroscience and other scientific approaches to cognition, learning, and performance.

Can we really be that far from instantly acquiring skills such as those shown in the movie The Matrix where capabilities, such as martial arts or flying a helicopter, can be downloaded into your brain and body? (speaking of which, if anyone has a link or file of the scene where Trinity learns to fly the helicopter on the roof, can you send it to me? It would be handy to have for such topics).

I’m fond of the line, “Careful what you wish for; you just might get it”, because I think we are getting what we wished for more and more every day! So the key question for us to answer remains, “What will we do with these enablers (be they technical, chemical or cognitive) when they arrive?” and how will we apply them in ways that produce very positive effects and outcomes for our learning and performance?  Life is for learning. Let’s live and learn to the max!

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Comments

[Xavier Ochoa]

For another nice example of SciFi exploring the issue of instant learning, read Profession by Issac Asimov (http://www.abelard.org/asimov.htm). Once instant learning is available, will we forget to learn any other way?

[Wayne H Hodgins]

Hi Xavier! Thanks for the reminder about Asimov. He was a real futurist and has some outstanding work that remains very prescient to this day.

Hope your work on LACLO is going well and Erik will be talking with you soon about connecting you with the ILCE consortium.

[Al Machum]

The "new science" of neuroplasticity is essentially all about the mechanics of UNLearning. Fascinating overview available in new-ish (2007) book, "The Brain That Changes Itself", Norman Doidge, M.D. Highly recommended.

[Wayne H Hodgins]

Quite right re the promise of neuroplasticity Al. I've been fortunate enough to have a bit of an inside track on this as the son of a very long time friend of mine is one of the leading researchers in this field and has been working on this with his colleagues in Paris for quite a few years now. In my discussions and meetings with him I’ve been fascinated to learn of the promise of their work with enzymes and amino acids (as I understand it) that they believe will enable us to return portions of our brain to that “plastic state” (which is also how they describe it) that is the same as when we are such learning dynamos as infants. The “plan” would be to enable us to momentarily put a specific part of the brain into this plastic state such that it can shed its previous state (the Unlearning part) and take on a new set of knowledge, skills, abilities, etc. and then be returned to its “regular” state to lock this in. Pretty wild to be sure but they assure me this is already happening within their research and they, admittedly biased I’m sure, have no doubt that this will work. What is in doubt is just how soon this could successfully be applied to humans. In the interim and as per my closing comments and questions, this type of coming capability puts the burden on us to start to think about these kinds of future enablers NOW and start asking and answering the critical questions of how this would be best applied, consequences, misuse, etc.

I have a little familiarity with Doidge’s book which you noted, though my understanding is that his focus is mostly on the equally fascinating and promising capability of brain “healing”. Perhaps most important of all of this is the need for us to change our previous thinking and supposed understanding of the brain from one where we’ve thought if it more as a fixed machine like organ to the emerging understanding that the brain is an extremely adaptive, flexible and plastic structure that can take on most anything. The impact on enabling all of us to realize so much more of our full potential is what excites me the most.

As with most profound and powerful new discoveries this bring with it equal opportunity to be used for good or for bad and thus it is appropriate that this probably gives most of us very mixed feelings of both fear and excitement. I’m still placing my bets on the fact that there is more good than evil in the world and that the future is ours to determine. With the inevitable exponential advancement of things such as neuroplasticity anything really is possible and so we’re back, thankfully, to being limited only by our imagination. Imagine if …….

[Al Machum]

“What will we do with these enablers (be they technical, chemical or cognitive) when they arrive?" and how will we apply them in ways that produce very positive effects and outcomes for our learning and performance?"

To a limited extent, they have arrived. Over the past few years I have experimented with, and due to postive results adopted the consistent daily use of, a variety of enzymes, co-enzymes and co-enzyme precursors, amino acids and phospholipids (phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylcholine, and inositol) to enhance memory, mental crispness and "traction", and capacity for multi-tasking. The effects are profound and remarkable.

Could I trouble you to provide links to the son-of-long-time-friend's research to which you refer, if you have time, and if available for public perusal?

[michael jones]

Eating and cooking are two really close processes. When you discover the satisfaction of the food you have prepared yorself, you will be very happy.