In moving house I had to clear a lot of stuff up, throw a lot away and generally reassess what is important to me, and what I need to keep hold of.
In my loft was a few boxes of memorabilia: letters (remember them?) sent to me from girls (I was at boarding school) throughout my adolescence; gig tickets; trophies; trinkets; bits and pieces from travelling
I reported in my Free Will? book that we can laser in memories to fruit flies, so it was only a matter of time before such procedures were contextualised to humans. Scientific American reports:
By studying how memories are made, UC Irvine neurobiologists created new, specific memories by direct manipulation of the brain, which could prove key to understanding and potentially resolving learning and memory disorders.
This hit the news yesterday on radio and TV. Fascinating stuff. This reported from Science Daily:
July 25, 2013 — The phenomenon of false memory has been well-documented: In many court cases, defendants have been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction.
I actually think that the title to this article is misleading, though the article from The Verge is interesting. It looks as though the worms do not regrow their memories but a greater propensity for learning lost skills involved with those memories. Doe this imply epigenetics?