Scientists Implant FALSE MEMORIES In Mice. #INCEPTIONHORN

Scientists have implanted false memories in mice. The Inception  horn is blowing like a mofuckah!

New Scientist:

In the 1940s, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield found his patients would recall seemingly random information — the smell of cookies for instance — when he stimulated different brain areas with electric shocks. Two studies have now found evidence to support the memory storage theory that Penfield stumbled across. The research, in mice, even demonstrates that it is possible to manipulate brain cells to create false memories.

Mark Mayford  of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, and colleagues genetically engineered mice so that neurons that fired would fire again when the brain was injected with a drug.

The team put the mice individually into a box in which each was exposed to a colour and smell, which encouraged a group of neurons to form a memory of the conditions. Because these neurons fired during memory-making, they could be reactivated when the drug was injected, allowing the researchers to induce an involuntary memory of the box.

Then, the researchers put each mouse into a second box, with different colours and smells. They injected the drug, making the mouse remember the first box, and then gave it a small electric shock.

Normally the shock would encourage the mouse to fear its immediate environment — the second box. Not in this case, though: when the mouse was shocked, it was sitting in the second box while strongly remembering the first. Consequently, it developed a fear of a mixture of both boxes — in effect an imaginary environment. The only time the mouse would panic was when it was in the second box and the drug was injected.

Mayford says this “hybrid” false memory suggests that two different groups of neurons encode each memory and do not interfere with one another.

It’s a terrifying time to be alive, what with our ability to thwart The Maker’s Plan and all. It’s also quite exciting. A double-edged sword, we can’t have it both ways. I suppose I wouldn’t trade this shit.