Memory

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91569-memory-and-forgetting/

Remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process--it’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated, and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7-second memory.

Joe LeDoux: If you give a drug to a goldfish. It can't make a memory. Jonah Lehrer: It's a physical thing. Not simply an idea. A physical trace made of proteins. They know because they did a test on rats. Where they have a associating connection between a tone and a shock. But if you inject a chemical in the brain that prevents these neurons of forming a memory, they'll never remember. If you get to the memory on the moment it's made you can bust it up. But if the protein bridge is there already you can not change it.. That's what they thought. Karim Nader: What will happen if you give it when it's remembering? It forgets...

He thought the rat to be scared of two tones. To see if the drug is not just causing brain damage... It could erase one tones instead of two. So it could erase certain memories.. After this the Sunshine of the spotless mind came out as a film. After that they were looking if they could treat persons with PTSS syndrome. They tested this. If you give the drug, it works, the trauma get's less emotional.

Is it wrong to mess with memory? In a way that's therapy too. The reason the drug works.. It's because you re-creating a memory every time you thin of this. The act of remembering is an act of creation. Every time you remember something, you chancing the memory a little bit. You think you remember something from 30 years ago but actually you are reinterpreting that memory in the light of today. All you got is the most recent recollection. If you suddenly think about a memory 30 years later, say through a cue. This memory is more honest than if you think about something for 30 years every day. Jadine Dudai: "The safest memory is a memory of someone with amnesia; If you have a memory. You use it. And you're more likely to change it."

Dr. Elizabeth Loftus: In research they alter the memory of a simulated events. They also found out that you can plant a memory. For example that you were lost for an extended period of time. We told them that we had talked to their parents etc. They would start with a true story, etc etc etc.. Somewhere in the middle they would slip in the line. In that particular story.. A quarter of the subjects adopted it as their own memory. What is happening; people take the image of an actual shopping center, and image of an actual family member out of these bits and pieces.