[skeeba]

In a grainy black-and-white video shot at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, a patient sits in a hospital bed, his head wrapped in a bandage. He’s trying to recall 12 words for a memory test but can only conjure three: whale, pit, zoo. After a pause, he gives up, sinking his head into his hands.

In a second video, he recites all 12 words without hesitation. “No kidding, you got all of them!” a researcher says. This time the patient had help, a prosthetic memory aid inserted into his brain.

Over the past five years, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has invested US$77 million to develop devices intended to restore the memory-generation capacity of people with traumatic brain injuries. Last year two groups conducting tests on humans published compelling results.

Link: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/businessweek...-1.1270821

[Magnetron]

Invasive, untested and aimless procedure. The hippocampus controls more things than just memory, so zapping that region probably isn't a good idea. This sounds like the same bullshit sales pitch of electroshock therapy in the 1970s when it was marketed as a cure-o-tonic for all mental ills.

Until they get a slightly more specific understanding of how memory works beyond just "activity in the hippocampus", they should probably not be fucking around with this. My 2 cents.

[Drako]

Oh no no no. This should not ever be done. Even if you're the worlds top brain surgeon, you could still mess someone up beyond a traumatic brain injury. An implant in for say, your arm wouldn't be much of a problem since there are no vital organs there. But still, the surgery for this would cost thousands and it would have to be done again if the chip has a certain lifetime. I don't like this idea. It seems more or less like we're just trying to fulfill a technological fantasy.

[mothered]

There's no way anyone's messing around with my memory, with something that's still In trial mode.

[Voxis]

I'll wait a few years for this. Honestly. Concept is cool on paper, but in execution. Maybe not so much.

[CSS]

If this gets tested well enough and there's actual proof that this works and that it's safe it could help people so much. Even tho we see it as "non-ethical" right now, it'll help is become more Superior and help us evolve to the next stage of evolution.
This can help so many types of persons in so many different ways that I wouldn't know why we shouldn't do it. (If it's safe ofc).

[Dismas]

Someone that can only remember 3 words probably needs this. Humans are meant to forget things, though.

[Magnetron]

I doubt this will ever materialize at all TBH. Remember when they mass-drugged the whole population with SSRIs in order to fight the growing epidemic of depression? They theorized that serotonin equals happiness so therefore more serotonin in the brain means less depression.
It turned out that depending on the brain region among a myriad of other things, more serotonin sometimes CAUSES depression. Many people went from depressed to ending their life often right after taking prozac.

That's what happens when you pursue a theory with no foundation. It's junk science.

To fix memory loss or augment the memory, they need to figure out what causes memory loss in the first place, like the drug-pushing pieces of shit from Big Pharma should've first discovered the etiology of depression BEFORE they started selling snake oil.