In this NPR blog, Barbara J. King reflects upon potential extensions of Susumu Tonegawa et al’s recent experiment in creating a fear-based memory in mice. While the ability to physically alter memory could have benefits (e.g. healing PTSD), King raises important ethical and material complications. She notes the nature of memory as unreliable, and considers the possible evolutionary benefit of this: creativity and problem-solving. Also, and most interesting to me, she pushes beyond the seeming boundaries of neuroscience and the isolation of the brain to consider the embodied, embedded nature of memories, existing in our flesh and “our social networks.” Memory (and consciousness, and social interaction, and existence itself) is not merely in our neurons. This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Canguilhem:
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“To act, it is necessary at least to localize….As if one could determine a phenomenon’s essence apart from its conditions! As if conditions were a mask or frame which changed neither the face nor the picture!” (from The Normal and the Pathological)
Canguilhem’s localization is not that of neuroscience, but of seeing a being in specific context (as opposed to a broad definition of normal/pathological). The ethics of tinkering with the brain must be understood within the contexts — the conditions — of our bodies and lives.
“Can We Foresee The Dangers Of Messing With Memory?”
Move along. There’s nothing to see here. Nothing new
anyway. Firstly, despite extensive reading of reports of Tonegawa’s
experiment, I am yet to see any remotely convincing evidence that
false memories were planted in mice. I wrote a blog post explaining
why I believe it is all hype here. Secondly, psychologists have been
planting false memories in people since the 1940s – perhaps most
famously with the ‘recovered memories of Satanic ritual abuse’ in
the 80s and 90s. Jacquie Pickrell and Elizabeth Loftus gave a
somewhat more ethical demonstration of how it can be done in 2001
with their ‘meeting Bugs Bunny in Disneyland‘
experiment. The only interesting thing Tonegawa demonstrated was
the credulity of science journalists, commentators and the general
public in the face of neurobabble. But Susan Greenfield has been
providing ample evidence of that for
decades.