THE TRANSHUMANISM SCRAPBOOK: MAPPING MEMORIES IN MICE, HUMANS NEXT?
The world constantly grows into a stranger and more Orwellian place almost daily, and for those following the transhumanism meme, the news - shared with is by Mr. V.T. and Mr. S.D. - grows even more dangerous, if not weirder. Scientists now claim they have mastered the ability to map the memories of mice, and, as the second article below implies, the ability to alter memories:
Scientists Can Now Read Your Memories
Note that this article follows a standard theory that memories are stored in the connections and networks of synapses:
"Scientists may have cracked the code of memories by successfully tracing how they are imprinted on the brain. An experiment charted the nerve cell changes that occurred within rats’ brains as they made decisions—a process that could prove life changing if replicated in humans.
“'For decades scientists have been trying to map memories in the brain. This study shows that scientists can begin to pinpoint the precise synapses where certain memories form and learning occurs,' explained James Gnadt, a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke." (Emphasis added)
But now consider this contradictory article from Scientific American:
Memories May Not Live in Neurons’ Synapses
...and this relevant passage:
"The idea that synapses store memories has dominated neuroscience for more than a century, but a new study by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, may fundamentally upend it: instead memories may reside inside brain cells.
Then later, this:
"If memory is not located in the synapse, then where is it? When the neuroscientists took a closer look at the brain cells, they found that even when the synapse was erased, molecular and chemical changes persisted after the initial firing within the cell itself. The engram, or memory trace, could be preserved by these permanent changes. Alternatively, it could be encoded in modifications to the cell's DNA that alter how particular genes are expressed. Glanzman and others favor this reasoning."
All this has suggested that perhaps memory is not even in brain cells, but somehow, throughout the body and perhaps - as I personally believe - non-locally, in the aether, so to speak. But in any case, the Scientific American article also suggests a technique for memory reconstruction and modification:
"Lately researchers have been crafting a work-around: evidence suggests that when someone recalls a memory, the reactivated connection is not only strengthened but becomes temporarily susceptible to change, a process called memory reconsolidation. Administering propranolol (and perhaps also therapy, electrical stimulation and certain other drugs) during this window can enable scientists to block reconsolidation, wiping out the synapse on the spot.
"The possibility of purging recollections caught the eye of David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at U.C.L.A., who set out to study the process in Aplysia, a sluglike mollusk commonly used in neuroscience research. Glanzman and his team zapped Aplysia with mild electric shocks, creating a memory of the event expressed as new synapses in the brain. The scientists then transferred neurons from the mollusk into a petri dish and chemically triggered the memory of the shocks in them, quickly followed by a dose of propranolol.
"Initially the drug appeared to confirm earlier research by wiping out the synaptic connection. But when cells were exposed to a reminder of the shocks, the memory came back at full strength within 48 hours. 'It was totally reinstated,' Glanzman says. 'That implies to me that the memory wasn't stored in the synapse.' The results were recently published in the online open-access journal eLife."
Now imagine such a technique perfected and extended. As some others who found this article and emailed it to me, could such memories reconstruction be used as the ultimate polygraph or lie detector technique? And if so, how would current legal concepts protect an individual? One could certainly make the case that the fifth amendment of the US constitution would prohibit a person from testifying against themselves via such a technique. But what about an already convicted criminal? Could an individual's memory be accessed coercively after the loss of civil rights?
And there is another looming problem confronting western jurisprudence: what if memory alteration - "personality reconstruction" - were actually made possible by such techniques. Years ago, the science fiction television series Babylon Five hypothesized just such a "punishment" - a capital punishment of sorts - of the "death of personality," i.e., the erasure of an individual personality and the construction of an artificial one, complete with new memories.
In the end, I still am of the opinion that scientists will continue to try to establish the basis of memory in merely materialistic causes and sources... and they will fail for the simple reason that memory may exist in the strange feedback loop between the material and the non-material. But even so, once this is finally acknowledged, it will still not erase the looming problems for jurisprudence. For that reason, I believe it is profoundly important that people understand that it is not simply the technological changes that will drive future western culture, but that it is vitally important to understand the debates in jurisprudence that it is already driving, and will continue to drive, for such technologies have yet another hidden potential, one dealing directly with the doctrine of the corporate person in law. Already that doctrine has produced both good, and ill, effects in society, not the least of which is the creation of group-think collectivized mentalities and the gradual erosion of individual sovereignty and responsibility. Now imagine such group cultures being enforced by corporations with the requirement that new employees receive their "memory and personality adjustment" on being employed, and you get the idea.
See you on the flip side...
23 Comments
Help the Community Grow
Please understand a donation is a gift and does not confer membership or license to audiobooks. To become a paid member, visit member registration.
I am a rock.
Another leaf from eugenics nostalgia album from the Washington Oligarchs’ Post: “new” report on link between brain size and income:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/new-brain-science-shows-poor-kids-have-smaller-brains-than-affluent-kids/2015/04/15/3b679858-e2bc-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html?postshare=7581429179026926
Our genes are repositories of memory.
In instances of multiple personalities the one side of the being may, for example, have asthma while it’s alter does not. To me that indicates either the activation or quelling of specific genes. The science of what is now called epigenetics, although nearly 50 years in the making is finally gaining traction and may in time prove to be instrumental in the understanding of memory.
And as some here have alluded the essence of consciousness may not even be within our bodies.
There are also the curious accounts of people who after a heart transplant acquire some of the personalities (and I may be wrong about this part, snippets of memory) of the donors.
Somewhat off topic but also an unacknowledged even maligned and ridiculed notion is that water, some believe, assimilates a energetic component of things to which it is exposed. Minerals, sunshine, kinetic energy, and especially fascinating, emotion have been cited to leave respective “signatures” on water. What does this have to do with human memory sources and pathways? Not a whole lot except that if one is receptive to the notion of ethereal properties of water then they may also relent dogma and start exploring other than the traditionally accepted neuro pathways.
I wonder if somehow, in the ether, there is an algorithmic process in which future memories are the result and are realized. Or if it’s the cycles they talk about.
I’d like to reply to this but currently seem to be kinda stuck regarding the question. If you would be so kind as to phrase it another way and if it’s not over my head I’ll do my best to give you an answer.
That asthma example says nothing about genes being the place for memory.
The asthma example was intended to show how in a same body with two different personalities a gene responses according to the dictates/gestalt of the personality. But you’re correct as triggering or blocking a memory isn’t the same as storing memory. In my zealousness to convey that gene expression is integral to recall I may have over-stepped here by saying genes are the repository of memory. Thanks for taking me to task on this.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/08/28/study-age-related-memory-loss-can-be-reversed
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/266368.php
Information, in its varied forms, is imprinted and not contained. So is the information “stored” and transmitted in our bodies (silica and water/ conductors and crystalline structures). It is imprinted and can be accessed in the ether( which is an open system of the hologram+non locality) thus, memory can be “reinstated” even after alteration.We are equipped to access the information, through the “feedback” system which is itself a torsion dynamics.
Somewhere, some guys have long established the physics , and the technology will also come in handy for the proverbial BNW..
“In the end, I still am of the opinion that scientists will continue to try to establish the basis of memory in merely materialistic causes and sources… and they will fail for the simple reason that memory may exist in the strange feedback loop between the material and the non-material.”
I don’t have any idea what “they” can and cannot do, but:
PUBLIC scientists might fail, but what about DARPA (etc) scientists? As you always say, if they’re talking about it publicly . . . .
Also, an important part of science in general is that the scientists (and humans in general) often learn how to technologically control some feature of reality without any real understanding of the principles involved . . . . .
HUMAN scientists might fail, but what about some OTHER critters out there (or here with us)??
Memory control has been part of the rumor mill for decades: perhaps there is something to it.
There was also a Star Trek episode (I think it was Deep Space 9) where O’Brien’s sentence of life improsonment was experienced “virtually.” I don’t remember the actual time in virtual reality, but he only spent like a week or two plugged in I think, but came out with a lifetime of memories living in a cell . . . and he was a changed man. Interesting idea.
Take boiling water: a PhD physicist would say that humans thousands of years ago, even though they could boil water, had no real understanding of the physics involved. Shoot, the physicist would say that about me or most people walking the street today. But we can all still boil water, right?
Now take the insertion of false memories into someone’s mind: how much you wanna bet that someone might actually be able to do that today, without having any true understanding of what, exactly, they are doing? Especially if they “discovered” this technology because they were given just the right push from “someone” . . .
I’m not saying I personally know that they can insert false memories now. Just that the use of technology does not necessarily require (or prove) correct understanding of the science.
It is extraordinary to see how these two approaches have played out over the centuries, with the latest aspect (at least in “western” culture) being the interaction between the Aristotelian and the Platonic. And for those who think about the best minds behind what is going on, that “nobody studies Aristotle and Plato any more”, well, they probably have another “think” coming. Starting from the difference between Memory (one-way time flow) and Recollection (non-local approach).
Propanalol is not the only common drug with memory effects.
Versed (Midazolam) is capable of causing a temporary period of amnesia, much like that reported in UFO abduction cases, and is routinely used to “prevent” memory of “bad experiences” (pain) during surgery, while sometimes keeping the patient alert and oriented during the procedure.
It can be administered nasally (aerosol?), rectally, or by IV.
I think it is also used to prevent memory of out-of-body experiences during surgery.
This brave new world has been going on for a long time as indeed the occult factors concerning masonic ritualistic geometries of ritual death rebirth enactments factor in aethero-somatic programming where the tracing boards, starting with the floor plan parquet provides the resonant flashing colors with which to induce a non-local disconnection from the body proper up the ladder where the game of shoots and ladders snakes and ladders or stairways to heavens the elite seek the means of programming their memories into new brains or rather death traps of hubris is this not fun to never have to use punctuation again while we see through the plots of whats the plan for the furniture is arranged and rearranged once again in what is the same old game what time does the sphinx point in silence what happened to Crowley in Cairo a game or
did indeed the Stele speak!
Maybe Rose knows
Ah Ouarda!
What we have going on here is waaaayyy beyond anything that humans can understand. Joseph has discussed this “non local memory” on many occasions, and the article points to scientists not having a clue about our mind and memory. Rupert Sheldrake is all over this, and someday he will be proved right, till then I think scientists are wasting time and energy, and probably a lot of money “getting nowhere”.
The drive to erase memory of who we are seems to also be in the indiscriminate destruction of antiquities, museums and libraries by rampaging military, now and in the past.
The introduction of harmful vaccine adjuvants, fluoride in municipal water, questionable GMO practices, electrosmog wi-fi, and mind altering pharmaceutical psychotropics does nothing to promote a healthy psyche.
If the essential components of a human being are body(soma), soul(psuche), and spirit(pneuma), then attention should be given to all three. It should be noted that soul and spirit are not synonymous except in the careless vocabulary of today.
If the soul is viewed as the sum total of one’s mind, intellect, personality replete with memories, emotions and life experiences, then injury or destruction of same is injury or destruction of the soul.
With both (physical) body and ephemeral soul destroyed, the spirit is bereft of any conscious connection in this cosmos and so ‘sleeps’.
To totally de-humanize humanity is to forever impound and encumber the spirit with a foreign body and an implanted false soul in never ending manipulation/servitude.
As secular science attempts to do so, it must approach the asymptote of spiritual truth, though being loathe to acknowledge it. They have good company with the long ago compromised religious dogmatists who also refuse to believe the words of a unique individual since two millenia ago. Reference g.John.
Memory/Mind is much, much more than the mapping & reading of “grey matter” tea leaves. This is really about: hocus-pocus your guilty of – [Pin the pick-your-crime tea-leaf-tale on the donkey/elephant] – “political crimes”.
much much more…if I tell you of things on earth and you don’t believe, why would I expect anything different if I spoke of things in heaven.
There is the real deal, then there are the actors.
on another note, literally, ( dealing with memories afterall) personally, following there rules is not the problem, watching them have to adhere to them….priceless.
Yes jedi it is…priceless.
I’m reminded of Ralph Nader being sued by Master Card for $15 million because of his ad showing Bush, the lesser, enjoying a meal as voice over intones “grilled tenderloin for fundraiser, $1,ooo a plate; then Gore takes center stage as the voice over asserts “campaign adds filled with half-truths, $10 million; and the we go back to the Bush shot “promises to special interest groups, over $10 million”
Then Ralph Nader’s tag line comes “There are some things money cannot buy. Without Ralph Nader in the television debates, truth will come in last.”
Ehen ambushed by the presstitutes choir on the suit Ralph responded by saying “they may be your Masters; but they certainly aren’t mine.” Later in another quip “I guess MasterCard doesn’t think the word priceless is really priceless”
a master of slaves, or a master of free men…
is there a difference when money comes into play?
This reminds me of the story We Can Remember It For You the base for the Total Recall movies. Or a story from the original Astro Boy anime were the prof O’Shay invents a mind reading machine that can read the thoughts of this crime boss. So the police can convict him of crimes he has been getting away with due to lack of evidence. I was eleven or twelve when I watched this Astro Boy episode and the concept disturb me then.
The full title of the short story by Philip K. Dick was We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.