temporary amnesia
well, it's 2:40am, and for some reason, sleep doesn't seem to want my company. i guess i just had a stressful day of pop quizzes, exams, papers, and schedule mishaps... and my brain didn't feel like shutting off!
speaking of my brain working overtime...i've been doing some research for my thesis, and i came across this paper that got me thinking. basically, these people took rats, exposed them to something to provoke fear, prevented some proteins from being expressed, and then tested their long term memory of the event. i'm still a little leary about how they actually test to see if the memory was consolidated or not, but apparently they were able to completely detroy the rats' ability to turn short term memory of that single event into a long term memory.
it was an almost creepy parallel to the movie "momento" and (less attractively) "50 first dates". i was taken aback by the thought of really not being able to remember beyond a certain point.
another part of the paper discussed the recalling of memories and then the reconsolidation of them. apparently, whenever you encode a memory to long term, it is static and stored away. however, when you recall a memory, it is taken out of "molecular storage" and becomes a reformable event...therefore allowing you to actually change an existing memory and reconsolidate it into it's static state. just by altering 1 protein during the recall stage, they were also able to erase a memory that had already been consolidated.
i guess this is where i mention "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind"... the ability to remove a single memory, or the memory of a specific time point in your life. what would it be like if we could just erase a bad event, and exist as though it never happened? how would that change the dynamics of who we are? and in the end of the movie (skip this part for those of you who haven't seen it)... the two end up together anyway, as if they had never met before. does this imply that we are incapable of growth outside of past mistakes? or does it reinforce the concept of fate? and going back to the "50 first dates" situation, does it mean that unless we have some sort of outside intervention, we would live the same day over and over again?
i sometimes wonder if i had this conversation with God before he put me in the womb and was like "ok val... here are all of the things that Satan is going to throw at you, and here's how to overcome that", and i was like "pssshht... hell, i just have to live the life of a upper-middle class, white, educated, american female... piece of cake!" and then God erased my memory, threw me in the womb, and look what a mess i've made of that!!
so where am i going with this? hell, i don't know, it's 3am... but i guess what i've been pondering lately is the amazing impact that our past has on who we are and how we live our lives. is it possible that tomorrow is completely planned out for me? and even if i could go back in time, would i make the same mistakes that i regret to this day?
speaking of my brain working overtime...i've been doing some research for my thesis, and i came across this paper that got me thinking. basically, these people took rats, exposed them to something to provoke fear, prevented some proteins from being expressed, and then tested their long term memory of the event. i'm still a little leary about how they actually test to see if the memory was consolidated or not, but apparently they were able to completely detroy the rats' ability to turn short term memory of that single event into a long term memory.
it was an almost creepy parallel to the movie "momento" and (less attractively) "50 first dates". i was taken aback by the thought of really not being able to remember beyond a certain point.
another part of the paper discussed the recalling of memories and then the reconsolidation of them. apparently, whenever you encode a memory to long term, it is static and stored away. however, when you recall a memory, it is taken out of "molecular storage" and becomes a reformable event...therefore allowing you to actually change an existing memory and reconsolidate it into it's static state. just by altering 1 protein during the recall stage, they were also able to erase a memory that had already been consolidated.
i guess this is where i mention "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind"... the ability to remove a single memory, or the memory of a specific time point in your life. what would it be like if we could just erase a bad event, and exist as though it never happened? how would that change the dynamics of who we are? and in the end of the movie (skip this part for those of you who haven't seen it)... the two end up together anyway, as if they had never met before. does this imply that we are incapable of growth outside of past mistakes? or does it reinforce the concept of fate? and going back to the "50 first dates" situation, does it mean that unless we have some sort of outside intervention, we would live the same day over and over again?
i sometimes wonder if i had this conversation with God before he put me in the womb and was like "ok val... here are all of the things that Satan is going to throw at you, and here's how to overcome that", and i was like "pssshht... hell, i just have to live the life of a upper-middle class, white, educated, american female... piece of cake!" and then God erased my memory, threw me in the womb, and look what a mess i've made of that!!
so where am i going with this? hell, i don't know, it's 3am... but i guess what i've been pondering lately is the amazing impact that our past has on who we are and how we live our lives. is it possible that tomorrow is completely planned out for me? and even if i could go back in time, would i make the same mistakes that i regret to this day?
posted by Valerie @ 2:41 AM
1 Comments:
At 1:12 AM,
Valerie said…
teej! i'm so excited that you have been faithful in your "blog checks". well done my friend, well done. i promise to minimize the neuroscience... but i feel i have to make no effort to minimize the philisophy (considering i suck at it). if only i were as wise at the_dude.
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