Can We Delete the Information From the Brain?

Discussion in 'Intelligence & Machines' started by anuragkanase, Jul 16, 2009.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. anuragkanase Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5
    Hello Friends,
    I have been anxious to know that Whether We can Delete the information from Brain or not?
    May it be psychological question or physically enabled question.
    I want to know that with the help of neuroscience i think we can Delete the information from the brain. Assist me if I am wrong.
    Thank You!
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. tuberculatious Banned Banned

    Messages:
    987
    I've seen people with half their brain removed and they had to relearn everything, except pooping and drooling.

    So yes.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. PieAreSquared Woo is resistant to reason Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,144
    Read "My Stroke of Insight" by Jill Taylor
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. tuberculatious Banned Banned

    Messages:
    987
    I don't have the book. send it to me.
     
  8. anuragkanase Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5
    Thank You my Friend.
    But the point is of deleting information.
     
  9. PieAreSquared Woo is resistant to reason Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,144
    on it's way

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  10. anuragkanase Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5
    Hey, You can try sending me too. LOL
    Thanks.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Brain damage, amnesia, certain drugs can do it. I don't believe it can be narrowly directed to specific memories, but some drugs have been used to treat PTSD, which is an aspect of memory.
     
  12. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,105
    Psychiatrists have been trying to do this for years with varying degree's of success and failure. For the most part the usage of chemicals to block receptors is used to try and stop "memories" from being attributed, however the problem with the usage of such chemicals is that long term usage can actually cause damage to the receptors, which means that while the targetted memory might or might not be removed, there is a bleed over effect of the rest of mnemonics. This means a person might have problems with either long term or short term memory.

    (In fact it's known that those patients that are placed on heavy levels of drugs for blocking receptors can suffer from the sort of short term memory used just for doing simple calculus or even written language. )

    A memory itself is made up of repetitive stimuli, should the stimuli stop then the memory fades. This is why if you are tutored over a long period of time, you become familiar with your studies, while if you swatted for one day on a subject, you might know the answers to a test for a day or two afterwards but within a week or two you'd forget everything you had learnt.

    There is also the added point especially in Autistic's, the capability of remembering things through translating them. What this means is that they might have familiarity or memory of a particular task, which can somehow relate to a new skill they are attempting to learn. So they map the new skill they are learning to be connected to that already apparent trained memory. This means that they can learn specific things quicker than normal people.
     
  13. anuragkanase Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    5
    This seems quiet Reasonable and better answer.
     
  14. tuberculatious Banned Banned

    Messages:
    987
    If you want only certain answers you should per definition delete some parts of your brain and free those areas for re-programming.

    2cts.
     
  15. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,461
    Versed induces amnesia.
     
  16. superstring01 Moderator

    Messages:
    12,110
    Ahhhh... Versed. Not just that, it makes the patient downright woosy, often times sedating them before more powerful medications can be administered.

    I remember telling my doctor that I wouldn't get a colonoscopy without a dose of it several years ago. Now its use is becoming standard when conducting this rather unpleasant procedure.

    ~String
     
  17. D.W. Dr.Weirdo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11
    Hmm your question (topic maybe?) got me thinking of the Latest "Invincible Iron Man" Where I'm going with this, he cancels out the brain cells in his mind to keep very fragile info from a evil dictating world-running leader, judging from the effects and whats it's doing to him, it work but to a price, he has to write down little slip-notes and how-tos of using a screwdriver.

    What your asking for is something that totally impossible, only way it can be "forgotten" is either forget, brainwashed, or bury it with new info.
     
  18. This makes me think of "Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind" a film made back in 2004, which involves the mapping and deletion of targeted memories. I think that if that were possible it would be neat. Sure, drugs of specific kinds, alsheimers, and other items may play a part in loss of memory but does it really rid targeted ideas? I would guess that some sort of psyciatric therapy technique involving items or trigger words used as controls could alter a specific part of the memory.
     
  19. As for Stryder's answer, that does make sense. A repeated stimuli will keep the memory going, but what if that stimuli no longer has a connection to the memory kept in the mind (i.e. a lighter no longer means that memory of being burned-can the memory of the experience be deleted)
     
  20. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

    Messages:
    1,467
    first we have to find memory. We have to pinpoint a specific area of the brain that is responsible for it.

    After that it is just a matter of killing those cells or loosening the synapses between them.

    Finding them is much harder than killing them.


    Deleting through psychology would be much much harder.
     
  21. Dub_ Strange loop Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    156
    That's a rather vague question, but if by "information" you mean specific, declarative memories that have already been stored in long term memory, and by "deleting" you mean intentionally removing, then the short answer is 'no.'

    This, in essence, speaks to the classical search for the engram, or physical memory trace. Unfortunately our understanding of exactly how memories are physically stored is still poor, but one thing that we've known for some time is that memories do not seem to be stored in any one particular place (an engram), but rather they are distributed to several brain areas which cooperatively represent the different aspects of the memory. It could be possible in theory to remove a memory by locating its every single physical trace in the brain and altering them to a state which existed before the memory was formed, but for now this possibility is so remote as to be considered impossible. With our current knowledge and technology, physically removing a memory would involve removing huge portions of the brain. In this sense it is possible in the strictest sense, but seeing as this would permanently incapacitate the patient, it would be rather misleading to refer to this as "memory deletion."

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  22. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    If you conclude that memory is holographic in nature, then, no you can not delete a specific part of it entirely. If you damage a part of it, you may not recover every detail, but it would be there in a lower resolution.

    If you consider memory as discrete item like a computer memory, yes you can delete specific part of it by damaging those neurons responsible for it.

    It is already proven that we do not have memory system like computers. But no one knows what is there and how it functions. Latest research is in mirror neurons, empathy neurons and all sorts of stuff. There is no best theory yet.

    50 years from now, we may find out that we also have quantum neurons that seemingly absorb the model of the world beyond your physical sensory input.

    So, the answer is who knows....IMHO, Memory is fractal in nature stored in a holographic pattern - based on my extensive research in to the subject. But we are just scratching at the surface. We do not have any external devices to create an analogy.
     
  23. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

    Messages:
    1,467
    You conclude: if we consider memory as a discrete item than we can delete.

    I say: "We can delete regardless of how you consider it"

    for instance, take Alzheimer's and how it damages the hippocampus. From this and other examples we gather most new memories are formed in that area.

    And the same goes for others, for instance the visual system holds a lot of visual memories and so on.

    You can use a hammer and a chisel to delete certain types of memories, regardless of how you consider it.

    Locating the specific memories is much more complicated, and that's where holographic fractal pattern theories get popularized - just because we know so little.

    But eventually, we will pinpoint the neurons responsible and be able to zap them. If neurons are not responsible than what is? Quantum neurons sounds so much more far-fetched than ordinary neurons... don't they??

    I think we both agree to a lot of this but it's not clear. I think once it gets down to deleting very specific memories, precision might be impossible because many neurons rely and support more than one memory.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page