Can Memories Be Saved and Played Again?

In two episodes of the series (The Entire History of You and Crocodile) people’s memories thanks to technology Different stories are being processed, giving the message that access can be achieved. In The Entire History of You, a man who thinks his wife is cheating on him tries to access his wife’s memories.

In Crocodile, the third episode of season 4 of the series, a brain implant (an object placed inside the body) is inserted into people’s heads, so that the person’s memories can be accessed. In the series, this device is used by cops and detectives. interrogation of criminals used for the purpose. In fact, when you think about it, those who fight crime in real life have such a technological tool It may seem as though it would be possible for them to completely eliminate crime by using So, let’s discuss together whether this seemingly utopian situation can be real.

In fact, the way this subject is handled in the show gives the following message to the audience: Sit down and watch what your human instincts and reactions might look like when a technological device is inside your brain.

This device, which records and then reveals memories in the series, is used to confess the crime of a murderer. Although the woman who committed the murder resisted the tool until the end, the device eventually won out and the woman’s actions were revealed. In order not to have too many spoilers, let’s explain it as follows; In this process, the woman becomes paranoid and makes other attempts so that the truth does not come out. So someone who wants to protect themselves from this device psychological In this example, we see that there is no limit to what they can do. In short, we can say that this situation is dangerous for human psychology.

Black Mirror The Entire History of You

Even before this series, we can say that similar topics were covered in movies such as Total Recall, Blade Runner, Strange Days. In the series, the memories recorded by the implant are remotely controlled. digital You can see that it is possible to mirror and watch on a screen. So, can wearable technology make progress that enables us to experience this in real life?

In theory, this could be:

First of all, in order to do this in real life, a wearable that is placed on the body video and audio recording device is needed. According to experts working in this field, an implantable or portable device with a large storage capacity should accompany us in this process. The storage space of this device is important because there are so many memories to save. We can say that contact lenses or glasses are also required to watch the memories again after they are recorded.

Take Meta (the company that Mark Zuckerberg co-founded), one-tap, for example. sound and image It plans to launch smart glasses with recording capability. So we have to wear such a device on ourselves. Of course, these are not ordinary glasses or lenses for seeing. These are technological devices with display and playback capability.

In Black Mirror, you can think of the device implanted in the brain as recording memories internally, not externally. So this means that there is no need for an extra process to save the memories, the device itself is recording and storing function while it is plugged in. automatically means to undertake.

To put it more clearly; With this device in your brain, every experience that your eyes see, your ears hear, and your body touches can be automatically recorded and turned into memories that can be watched again. As you can see, everything worked out in theory, could be done in practice It sounds like it, but things may not be exactly the way you think.

So what does science say about whether this can be implemented?

In a University of California study, researchers analyzed what a person sees, namely visual perception He performs various calculations and applies functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to rearrange it. Subjects sit in an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging, the scan you know) device for a long time. While the experts observe the blood flow in the part of the brain (the visual cortex), which processes the information of the images they see, the participants watch two movie trailers.

Afterwards, academics stated that after seeing the images in the trailer, the brain activities is recording. In fact, the purpose of doing this is to guess how the videos people watch arouse their brain activity.

According to the academician Jack Gallant, who was actually involved in this research, the aim of the study is to find out how the clips watched by the subjects affect their brain movements, and then derive a computational model according to those findings and reconstruct them. visualization to be able to create. In other words, let’s simply put it this way: According to the videos you watch most on the Internet, you may see product advertisements. For example, after browsing the site of a shoe brand, seeing the advertisements of that shoe brand on any site is exactly what this research aims to say.

Now, this is related to our topic: According to the result of this research, when your memories that no one knows or see are exposed to such a technology tomorrow, new images similar to those memories can be produced. So there is such a possibility. However, in such a situation, of course, some ethical problems may arise here. For example, every moment is personal and special. When it is wanted to be used by someone else, secrecy of memory would be violated.

Of course, if we leave the possibilities aside, it is not possible to record memories and watch them again later.

How the molecules in the brain’s storage area work is not yet a subject that science has clearly understood. For example, various components play a role in the emergence of perception, storage and recall processes in the brain. These are issues that are still being researched. Also, glia How some components (found in the central nervous system; pendymal cells, astrocytes, microglia, and oligodendrocytes) participate in brain activities is not yet resolved.

Studies on the processing of memory are mostly like the research example we gave above, visual memory about. In other words, we do not yet have a development in which our memory of sound and touch can be processed technologically. Think about it, is it possible for these developments to occur when even the brain has not been fully deciphered by science and a comprehensive map of the neural cells of the brain (the connectome) has not been made?

Also, considering the state of forgetting a person’s memories, even if the events are recorded, it is not possible for us to watch it one hundred percent as that person lived. After all, technology does not currently have a function such as entering our brains and reminding us of the experiences we have forgotten. In short, since the human brain is not an organ that even science can solve, these episodes in the Black Mirror series will not be real for now. science fiction looks like your fantasies.