Scientist to Develop Memory-Enhancing Implant

A scientist wants to build a prosthetic that can function as an artificial hippocampus. It will act as a human memory enhancement in the form of a prosthetic, and he's already seeing it attached to humans. 

The idea stems from the concept of Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998 that a computer can operate together with the brain as an "extended mind." 

This means a computer can offer additional processing capabilities as we work out problems and annex memories with information, images, and other factors. 

The hippocampus is the area in the brain associated with memory and spacial navigation. The plan is for the device to convert short-term memory into long-term memory and store it the way the hippocampus does. Interestingly, his research is brimming with potential.

Berger began by teaching a rabbit to associate an audio tone with a puff of air administered to its face and causes it to blink. Now the electrodes on the rabbit allowed Berger to observe patterns from the rabbit's hippocampus, which he refers to "space-time" code. This represents the neurons in the brain at a specific moment.

Interestingly, the code in the rabbit gradually changes into a different code as it progresses in the hippocampus. The tone alone was now able to help the hippocampus produce a recallable space-time code based on the incoming version and make the rabbit blink. 

According to Big Think, the process became predictable enough for Berger to develop his own mathematical model. He then built an artificial rat hippocampus to test his model.

He did this by training rats to press a lever with electrodes monitoring hippocampuses. When the code was run through his model and back, the rats successfully pressed their levels. Berger even said they may bring the memory back into the brain.

Which begs the question: Does the brain have some memory index? And if so, can we do the same to humans?

Dustin Tyler from the Case Western Reserve university told Wired that these prosthetic interfacing with the brain face a fundamental challenge, especially since billions of neurons in the brain make them work together. To build a technology that will go into that and connect with them will be tricky.

Regardless, Bergen told IEEE Spectrum that they're "testing [his system] in humans now" and are getting good initial results. He hopes to bring his concept to the market in the form of a prosthetic for people with memory problems. 

While his prosthetic improved the memories of rhesus monkeys, a human brain is a vastly different thing. This is especially since rats only have 200 million neurons and humans have 86 billion. 

Regardless, human trials have so far been with in-patient epileptics with electrodes already in place for their treatments. Berger's team observed and recorded activity in the hippocampus and have successfully enhanced their memories by stimulating neurons.