Today's technology is slowly making it possible. And scientists are beginning to realize that, by combining a few different methods, they could come up with radical new solutions to the problem of how to better understand the brain when it comes to handling memories -- how they're made, where they're stored, and how they could be changed in the event that it becomes necessary.
According to Dr. Alison Preston from the University of Texas, memories were always sort of understood -- in the intuitive sense -- even if the mechanisms behind them were still unclear. But now, a number of different approaches might lead directly to open manipulation of memories in the human brain.
Firstly, scientists have recently adapted a nearly two-decade-old discovery that introduced the world to so-called "face cells" -- neurons in the brain that appeared to become highly active when thinking about the face of a certain individual. Face cell activity was seen as an indication that specific neurons are associated directly with certain people's faces. This discovery was used in conjunction with another one, which showed the presence of CREB -- a key protein that appears to be active during learning -- and the effects of boosting it on the formation of memories...read more>>>...
