Opto-genetics is a neuro-modulation method that uses a combination of optics and genetics to control and monitor the activities of individual neurons inside the living tissue—even within a freely moving animals.
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In a sexual harassment case, police picked up Jack* from CCTV footage and circumstantial evidence.
Jack had an average height and a non descriptive features. He was innocent but he happened to be on that highway at that moment.
When the photo of Jack was shown to the victim, she was not sure. But she said he probably was the culprit.
In the Identity parade, she identified Jack and confirmed that he was the culprit.
Jack got the sentence.
Subsequently the real culprit was picked up, a serial offender and confessed to the crime and Jack was released.
The woman was not at fault. Our memory is. Our memory is not a Hi Fidelity video recorder. We are endowed with the power to construct, distort and reconstruct our memory over the years.
Actually every time we remember something vividly, it’s the contaminated memory we have revisited too often.
* Not his real name.
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Last year, MIT neuroscientists Xu Liu and Steve Ramirez manipulated the memory of a mouse. They “activated” fear memories in that mouse by a laser beam. The mouse lay frozen in fear although there is no change in his environment.
This new breed of science is known as opto-genetics.
Opto-genetics is a neuro-modulation method that uses a combination of optics and genetics to control and monitor the activities of individual neurons inside the living tissue—even within a freely moving animals.
Literally, Liu and Ramirez manipulated inside the brain of a mouse to create a whole new “memory” of an event that never happened in that mouse.
It’s amazing science. Once developed it can allow us to tinker with the memory of a living body.
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So what happens when we manipulate the memory inside someone’s brain ? We can erase existing memory, insert new one, reconstruct a totally foreign experience which the person will emphatically accept as his own self. Hypnotic isn’t it?
After all our Memory is our identity. The British author Julian Barnes writes “You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are.”
If memories can be manipulated at will, what does it mean to have a past? If we can erase a bad memory, or create a good one, how do we develop a true sense of self?
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 