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Brain Implant Sparks Remarkable Recovery in Patients With Severe Brain Injury

ByShelly Fan

December 4, 2023

At 21 years old, a young woman’s life was turned upside down after suffering a blow to the head and severe brain injury during a devastating traffic accident.

She’s been living with the consequences ever since, struggling to focus long enough to complete simple everyday tasks. Juggling multiple chores was nearly impossible. Her memory would slip. Words would get stuck on the tip of her tongue. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own. Constantly in motion, it was difficult to sit still. Depression and anxiety clouded her mind.

Eighteen years later, she underwent a surgery that again changed her life. After carefully mapping her brain, surgeons implanted electrodes deep into the thalamus. Made of two bulbous structures—one on each hemisphere—the thalamus is the Grand Central Station of the brain, its connections reaching far and wide across multiple regions. A stimulator, implanted near her collar bone, automatically activated the neural implant for 12 hours a day.

The results were striking. In just three months, her scores improved on a standard test measuring myriad cognitive functions. For the first time in decades, she no longer felt overwhelmed throughout her day. She began to love reading and other hobbies.

“I just—I want to think,” she told the researchers. “I am using my mind…I don’t know why, it just makes me laugh, but it’s amazing to me that I enjoy doing these things.”

The woman, known as P1, took part in a small, ambitious trial seeking to reverse cognitive troubles from brain injuries. Led by Dr. Jaimie Henderson at Stanford University, the clinical trial recruited six people to see if electrically stimulating the thalamus restored the participants’ ability to logically reason, make plans, and focus on a given task.

On average, five of the participants’ scores improved by up to 52 percent, far outperforming the team’s modest goals by over five-fold. Because the stimulation is automatic, the volunteers went about their daily lives as the implant worked its therapeutic effects under the hood.

The benefits were noticeable. One participant said he could finally concentrate on TV shows, whereas previously he struggled due to short attention span. Another said he could now track multiple activities and switch attention—like keeping up a conversation while putting groceries away.

While promising, the therapy requires brain surgery, which can be risky. One participant withdrew midway due to infection. But for those who tolerated the therapy, it’s been a life-changer not just for them, but for their families.

“I got my daughter back. It’s a miracle,” said a member of P1’s family.

Tunneling Deep

Deep brain stimulation, the core of the therapy, has a long history.

The idea is simple. The brain relies on multiple circuits working in tandem. These connections can break due to disease or injury, making it impossible for electrical signals to coordinate and form thoughts or decisions.

One solution is to bridge broken brain networks with a neural implant. Thanks to sophisticated implants and AI, we can now tap into the brain and spinal cord’s electrical chatter, decode their intent, and use this “neural code” to drive robotic arms or allow paralyzed people to walk again.

While powerful, these implants often sit on the outer layer of the brain or around nerves in the spinal cord that are relatively easy to access.

Deep brain stimulation presents a challenge because it targets regions buried inside the brain. Invented in the 1980s to treat motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease, the technology has since been used to battle depression, with just a few zaps easing symptoms in the severely depressed.

The new study built on these results. People with long-term traumatic brain injury often struggle with mood and attention span, making it difficult to balance multiple tasks without headaches and fatigue. They also struggle to sit still.

These functions are controlled by different areas of the brain. But one critical link is the thalamus, a hub that connects regions supporting attention, mood, and movement. The thalamus is made up of two garlic-shaped bulbs, each nestled in the brain’s hemispheres, that coordinate signals from across the brain. A major sensory relay station, it’s been dubbed “the gateway to consciousness.”

Previous studies in mice pinpointed part of the thalamus as a potential therapeutic hub for traumatic brain injury. Other studies found that stimulating the region was safe in people with minimal consciousness and helped them recover. That’s the region the new study targeted.

Zapping Away

The team narrowed down over 400 volunteers to just six—four men, two women with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury symptoms. Before surgery, they were given multiple tests to gauge their baseline cognitive abilities, mood, and general outlook on life.

Each participant had a commercially available neurostimulator implanted into their thalamus in both brain hemispheres. To catch potential early effects after implantation, they were assigned to three groups based on how soon the implant was turned on post-surgery.

The participants experimented with different zapping patterns for two weeks. Like scrolling through Spotify playlists, each eventually found a pattern optimized to their neural makeup: The stimulation’s timing and intensity allowed them to think clearer and feel better, with minimal side effects. The implant then stimulated their thalamus 12 hours a day for three months.

The results were impressive. Overall, the participants improved between 15 and 52 percent as measured by the same cognitive test used for their baseline. Two patients, including P1, improved so much that they no longer met the diagnosis for lower moderate disability. This boost in mental capacity suggests the participants can tackle work and reconnect with friends and family with minimal struggle, the team wrote in the study.

Another test halted the stimulation in a handful of participants for nearly a month. Neither the researchers nor participants initially knew whose implants were turned off. Within weeks, two patients noticed they felt much worse and withdrew from the test. Of the three people remaining, two improved—and one got worse—with the stimulator on. Further investigation found the implant was erroneously zapping the non-responsive patient’s brain when it should have been turned off.

Although there were minimal side effects, the treatment didn’t disrupt the participant’s lives. The zapping caused some jaw muscle strangeness in a few people. P1, for example, found she slurred her words when on the highest stimulation intensity. Another person had trouble staying still, and some experienced mood changes.

The study is still early, and many questions remain unanswered. For example, does the treatment work regardless of where the brain was injured? The volunteers were only tested for three months after surgery, meaning longer term improvements, if any, remain a mystery. That said, multiple participants signed on to keep their implants and participate in future studies.

Even with these caveats, participants and their loved ones were thankful.  “It’s so profound to us,” P1’s family member said. “I never would’ve believed it. It’s beyond my hopes, beyond anticipation. Somebody turned the lights back on.”

Image Credit: National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health

THE ORIGINAL CHILD

Cistercian Monk Thomas Merton

I found this poem in 2001 in search of personal inner peace.  Each year I try to remember to circulate it; joining Twitter ensures that my canisgallicus followers receive the links too; alongside those on my email address list.

This poem should be on every school/college curriculum to prepare children to enable children to think and explore the present war conflicts that leave us vulnerable again to nuclear devastation.

1: In the year 1945 an Original Child was born. The name Original Child was given to it by the Japanese people, who recognized that it was the first of its kind.

2: On April 12th, 1945, Mr. Harry Truman became the President of the United States, which was then fighting the second world war. Mr. Truman was a vice president who became president by accident when his predecessor died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He did not know as much about the war as the president before him did. He knew a lot less about the war than many people did.

About one hour after Mr. Truman became president, his aides told him about a new bomb which was being developed by atomic scientists. They called it the “atomic bomb”. They said scientists had been working on it for six years and that it had so far cost two billion dollars. They added that its power was equal to that of twenty thousand tons of TNT. A single bomb could destroy a city. One of those present added, in a reverent tone, that the new explosive might eventually destroy the whole world.

But Admiral Leahy told the president the bomb would never work.

3: President Truman formed a committee of men to tell him if this bomb would work, and if so, what he should do with it. Some members of this committee felt that the bomb would jeopardize the future of civilization. They were against its use. Others wanted it to be used in demonstrations on a forest of cryptomeria trees, but not against a civil or military target. Many atomic scientists warned that the use of atomic power in war would be difficult and even impossible to control. The danger would be very great. Finally, there were others who believed that if the bomb were used just once or twice, on one or two Japanese cities, there would be no more war. They believed the new bomb would product eternal peace.

4: In June 1945 the Japanese government was taking steps to negotiate for peace. On one hand the Japanese ambassador tried to interest the Russian government in acting as a go-between with the United States. On the other hand, an unofficial approach was made secretly through Mr. Allen Dulles in Switzerland. The Russians said they were not interested and that they would not negotiate. Nothing was done about the other proposal which was not official. The Japanese High Command was not in favor of asking for peace, but wanted to continue the war, even if the Japanese mainland were invaded. The generals believed that the war should continue until everybody was dead. The Japanese generals were professional soldiers.

5: In the same month of June, the President’s committee decided that the new bomb should be dropped on a Japanese city. This would be a demonstration of the bomb on a civil and military target. As “demonstration” it would be a kind of a “show”. “Civilians” all over the world love a good “show”. The “destructive” aspect of the bomb would be “military”.

6: The same committee also asked if America’s friendly ally, the Soviet Union, should be informed of the atomic bomb. Someone suggested that this information would make the Soviet Union even more friendly than it was already. But all finally agreed that the Soviet Union was now friendly enough.

7: There was discussion about which city should be selected as the first target. Some wanted it to be Kyoto, an ancient capital of Japan and a center of the Buddhist religion. Others said no, this would cause bitterness. As a result of a chance conversation, Mr. Stimson, the Secretary of War, had recently read up on the history and beauties of Kyoto. He insisted that this city should be left untouched. Some wanted Tokyo to be the first target, but others argued that Tokyo had already been practically destroyed by fire raids and could no longer be considered a “target.” So it was decided Hiroshima was the most opportune target, as it had not yet been bombed at all. Lucky Hiroshima!

What others had experienced over a period of four years would happen to Hiroshima in a single day!

Much time would be saved, and “time is money!”

8: When they bombed Hiroshima they would put the following out of business: The Ube Nitrogen Fertilizer Company; the Ube Soda Company; the Nippon Motor Oil Company; the Sumitoma Chemical Company; and most of the inhabitants.

9:  At this time some atomic scientists protested again, warning that the use of the bomb in war would tend to make the United States unpopular. But the President’s committee was by now fully convinced that the bomb had to be used. Its use would arouse the attention of the Japanese military class and give them food for thought.

Stanza 10:
Admiral Leahy renewed his declaration that the bomb would not explode.

Stanza 11:
On the 4th of July, when the United States in displays of fireworks celebrates its independence from British rule, the British and Americans agreed together that the bomb ought to be used against Japan.

Stanza 12:
On July 7th the Emperor of Japan pleaded with the Soviet Government to act as a mediator for peace between Japan and the Allies. Molotov said the question would be “studied”. In order to facilitate this “Study” Soviet troops in Siberia prepared to attack the Japanese. The Allies had, in any case, been urging Russia to join the war against Japan. However, now that the atomic bomb was nearly ready, some thought it would be better if the Russians took a rest.

Stanza 13:
The time was coming for the new bomb to be tested, in the new Mexico desert. A name was chosen to designate this secret operation. It was called “TRINITY”

Stanza 14:
At 5.30 a.m. on July 16th, 1945, a plutonium bomb was successfully exploded in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was suspended from a nine hundred-foot steel tower which evaporated. There was a fireball a mile wide. The great flash could be seen for a radius of 250 miles. A blind woman miles away said she perceived light. There was a cloud of smoke 40,000 feet, high. It was shaped like a toadstool.

Stanza 15:
Many who saw the experiment expressed their satisfaction in religious terms. A semi-official report even quoted a religious book – the New Testament – “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief”. There was an atmosphere of devotion. It was a great act of faith. They believed the explosion was exceptionally powerful.

Stanza 16:
Admiral Leahy, still a “doubting Thomas”, said that the bomb would not explode when dropped from a plane over a city. Others may have had faith, but he had his own variety of “HOPE”.

Stanza 17:
On July 21st a full written report of the explosion reached President Truman at Potsdam. The report was documented by pictures. President Truman read the report and looked at the pictures before starting out for the conference. When he left his mood was jaunty and his step was light.

Stanza 18:
That afternoon Mr. Stimson called on Mr. Churchill, and laid before him a sheet of paper bearing a code message about the successful test. This message read “Babies satisfactorily born”. Mr. Churchill was quick to realize that there was more in this than met the eye. Mr. Stimson satisfied his legitimate curiosity.

Stanza 19:
On this same day sixty atomic scientists who knew of the test signed a petition that the bomb should not be used against Japan without a convincing warning and an opportunity to surrender.

At this time the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which had left San Francisco on the 18th, was sailing toward the Island of Tinian, with some U 235 in a lead bucket. The fissionable material was about the size of a softball, but there was enough for one atomic bomb. Instructions were that if the ship sank, the uranium was to be SAVED FIRST BEFORE ANY LIFE. The mechanism of the bomb was on board the U.S.S. Indianapolis, but it was not yet assembled.

Stanza 20:
On July 26th the Potsdam declaration was issued. An ultimatum was given to Japan: “Surrender unconditionally or be destroyed”. Nothing was said about the new bomb. But pamphlets dropped all over Japan threatened “an enormous bombardment”, if the army would not surrender. On July 26th the U.S.S. Indianapolis arrived at Tinian and the bomb was delivered.

Stanza 21:
On July 28th, since the Japanese High Command wished to continue the war, the ultimatum was rejected. A censored version of the ultimatum appeared in the Japanese press with the comment that it was “an attempt to drive a wedge between the military and the Japanese people”. But the Emperor continued to hope that the Russians, after “studying” his proposal, would help to negotiate a peace. On July 30th Mr. Stimson revised a draft of the announcement that was to be made after the bomb was dropped on the Japanese target. The statement was much better than the original draft.
Stanza 22:
On August 1st the bomb was assembled in an air conditioned hut on Tinian. Those who handled the bomb referred to it as “Little Boy”. THEIR CARE FOR THE ORIGINAL CHILD WAS DEVOTED AND TENDER.

Stanza 23:
On August 2nd President Truman was the guest of His Majesty King George VI on board the H.M.S. Renown in Plymouth Harbor. The atomic bomb was praised. Admiral Leahy, who was present, declared that the bomb would not work. His Majesty George VI offered a small WAGER TO THE CONTRARY.

STANZA 24:
On August 2nd a special message from the Japanese Foreign Minister was sent to the Japanese Minister in Moscow. “It is requested that further efforts be exerted….Since the loss of one day may result in a thousand years of regret, it is requested that you immediately have a talk with Molotov”. But Molotov did not return from Potsdam until the day the bomb fell.

STANZA 25:
On the 4th the bombing crew on Tinian watched a movie of “Trinity” (the Alamogordo Test). August 5th was a Sunday but there was little time for formal worship. They said a quick prayer that the war might end “very soon”. On that day, Col. Tibbetts, who was in command of the B-29 that was to drop the bomb, felt that his bomber ought to have a name. He baptized it ENOLA GAY, AFTER HIS MOTHER IN IOWA. Col. Tibbetts was a well balanced man, and not sentimental. He did not have a nervous break-down after the bombing, LIKE SOME OF THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CREW.

STANZA 26:
On Sunday afternoon “Little Boy” was brought out in procession and devoutly tucked away in the womb of Enola Gay. That evening few were able to sleep. THEY WERE AS EXCITED AS LITTLE BOYS ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

STANZA 27:
At 1.37 a.m. August 6th the weather scout plane took off. It was named the Straight Flush, in reference to the mechanical action of a water closet. There was picture of one, to make this evident.

STANZA 28:
At the last minute before taking off, Col. Tibbetts changed the secret radio call sign from “Visitor” to “Dimples”. The bombing Mission would be a kind of FLYING SMILE.
STANZA 29:
At 2.45 a.m. Enola Gay got off the ground with difficulty. Over Iwo Jima she met her escort, two more B-29’s, one which was called the Great Artiste. Together they proceeded to Japan.

STANZA 30:
At 6.40 they climbed to 31,000 feet, the bombing altitude. The sky was clear. It was a perfect morning.

STANZA 31:
At. 3.09 they reached Hiroshima and started the bomb run. The city was full of sun. The fliers could see the green grass in the gardens. No fighters rose up to meet them. There was no flak. NO-ONE IN THE CITY BOTHERED TO TAKE COVER.

STANZA 32:
The bomb exploded within 100,000 feet of the aiming point. The fireball was 18,000 feet across. The temperature at the centre of the fireball was 100,000,000 degrees. The people who were near the centre became nothing. The whole city was blown to bits and the ruins all caught fire instantly everywhere burning briskly. 70,000 people were killed right away or died within a few hours. Those who did not die at once suffered great pain. Few of them were soldiers.

STANZA 33:
The men in the plane perceived that the raid had been successful, but they thought of the people in the city and they were not perfectly happy. Some felt they had done wrong. But in any case they had obeyed orders “IT WAS WAR”

STANZA 34:
Over the radio went the code message that the bomb had been successful: “Visible effects greater than Trinity…Proceeding to Papacy.

“PAPACY WAS A CODE NAME FOR TINIAN

STANZA 35:
It took a little while for the rest of Japan to find out what had happened to Hiroshima. Papers were forbidden to publish any news of the new bomb. A four-line item said that Hiroshima had been hit by incendiary bombs and added: “It seems that some damage was caused to the city and its vicinity”.

STANZA 36:
Then the military governor of the Prefecture of Hiroshima issued a proclamation full of martial spirit. To all the people without hands, without feet, with their faces falling off, with their intestines hanging out, with their whole bodies full of radiation, he declared: “We must not rest a single day in our war effort….We must bear in mind that annihilation of the stubborn enemy is our road to revenge”. HE WAS A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER.

STANZA 37:
On August 8th Molotov finally summoned the Japanese Ambassador. At last neutral Russia would give an answer to the Emperor’s inquiry. Molotov said coldly that the Soviet Union was declaring WAR ON JAPAN.

STANZA 38:
On August 9th another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, though Hiroshima was still burning. On August 11th the Emperor overruled his high command and accepted the peace terms dictated at Potsdam. Yet for three days discussion continued, until on August 14th the surrender was made public and final.

STANZA 39:
Even then the Soviet troops thought they ought to fight in Manchuria “just a little longer”. They felt that even though they could not, at this time, be of help in Japan, it would be worthwhile if they displayed their goodwill in Manchuria, or even in Korea.

STANZA 40:
As the Original Child that was born, President Truman summed up the philosophy of the situation in a few words.

“WE FOUND THE BOMB, he said, AND WE USED IT”

STANZA 40:
Since that summer many other bombs have been “FOUND”.

WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN?
AT THE TIME OF WRITING (1960’S), AFTER A SEASON OF BRISK SPECULATION, MEN SEEM TO BE FATIGUED BY THE WHOLE QUESTION.

Thomas Merton – Cistercian Monk

Opinion

When Pope Francis addressed the American Congress in 2015 he listed Thomas Merton as one of four exemplary Americans who provide wisdom for today, besides Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King jnr and Dorothy Day: “Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.’’

This turbulent monk: Did the CIA kill vocal war critic Thomas Merton?

Mystery still surrounds death of noted Catholic writer in Thailand 50 years ago

Soline Humbert

Mon Dec 3 2018 – 14:43

Fifty years ago next Monday, Thomas Merton was found dead in his room near Bangkok, where he had been the main speaker at an international monastic conference.

This most vocal critic of war was repatriated to the US on a military plane with the bodies of American soldiers killed in Vietnam. At the time, he was the best-known Catholic monk in the world and the news of his death at 53 was reported on the front page of the New York Times, beside that of the great German theologian, Karl Barth.

It was 27 years exactly to the day since he had entered, at age 27, the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, Kentucky, and this was the first time he had been allowed to travel abroad since then. His Asian Journal, including his encounters with the Dalai Lama, was to be published posthumously.

In his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (Elected Silence in the English edition), he relates his religious conversion was a best seller when it was published in 1948, translated into several languages and is still in print. Merton published more than 70 books, essays, poems and wrote thousands of letters. From his monastery and then his hermitage, he corresponded with Rosemary Radford Ruether, Boris Pasternak, DT Suzuki and countless others.

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Through his writings on faith, silence, solitude, contemplation, mystical theology, interfaith dialogue and social justice, he had become a spiritual master for catholics and spiritual seekers throughout the world.

He was also a pastor to social activists and peacemakers like the Berrigan brothers and an influential voice against war and nuclear proliferation. This made him many enemies.

‘A man of dialogue’

When Pope Francis addressed the American Congress in 2015 he listed Thomas Merton as one of four exemplary Americans who provide wisdom for today, besides Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King jnr and Dorothy Day: “Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.’’

Ironically, 10 years previously, when the first American catechism for adults was published, Thomas Merton was omitted as not being Catholic enough. His biography had been originally the opening profile story in the draft version but some critics argued that his investigation of Eastern religions toward the end of his life make him a poor role model for faithful catholics.

As a result, the chapter on prayer is the only one missing a biographical profile. However, the Anglican Communion which has included him among Holy Women and Men in its lectionary celebrates his feast on December 10th.

If Merton’s life and writings were controversial, it has not stopped there. There has been renewed controversy about the cause of his death. The widely accepted official story has been that it was an accident, that he was electrocuted by a faulty fan, while coming out of a shower.

No autopsy

However, the cause of death given by the Thai police was a heart attack, and there was no autopsy. The presence of a bleeding wound at the back of Merton’s head was not investigated. Was Thomas Merton murdered and was there a cover-up?

In 1997, Jim Douglass, a friend of Merton had already publicly raised the issue. In 2016, theologian Matthew Fox, who believes that Merton had been assassinated by one of the many CIA agents active in Thailand, reported that one of them had actually told him so.

In a paper presented this summer in Rome at the Thomas Merton Symposium, David Martin and Hugh Turley presented the findings of their book, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, which discloses photographic evidence and picks holes in the accidental electrocution story.

Only an exhumation of Thomas Merton’s body could settle the issue, but it is unlikely the Trappists at Gethsemani would give permission.

“The very thoughts of a person like me are crimes against the state. All I have to do is think, and immediately I become guilty,” Merton had written in A Signed Confession of Crimes against the State, both in jest and deadly serious. Was the turbulent priest got rid of? His prophetic spirit lives on.

Soline Humbert is a Spiritual Guide and an advocate for Women’s Ordination

174,058 views 16 Sept 2022 #unlockyourfreedom#tamiemjoyce#narcissism 10 SIGNS YOU’RE THE FAMILY SCAPEGOAT // A scapegoat is a person who is blamed and shamed for other people’s wrongdoings, and quite undeservedly so. Family scapegoating is a very common phenomena in dysfunctional families, whereby one member of the family will be cast as the family scapegoat. The selection process for dysfunctional family roles follows a certain criteria and as such, family scapegoating signs are easy to identify when you know what you’re looking for. Most specifically, family scapegoat abuse shows up in the way the primary target being scapegoated bears the brunt of the narcissistic family member’s anger. Anything and everything that goes wrong is somehow always the scapegoat’s fault. The reality is, every dysfunctional family system needs a scapegoat. That one person whose role it is to be the family punching bag, and garbage bin, so to speak. That one person is cast in the role via what is typically a silent and unspoken agreement, which allows the toxic, empathy empaired, and deeply unconscious tribe have a place to cast all of their blame, shame, and unresolved pain, fury, and trauma. And thus, the family scapegoat is selected, targeted, used, abused, exploited, and targeted some more. When does it end? Only when the scapegoat decides it does. Not a moment sooner.

NEUROLOGY

Sheena Josselyn, neuroscientist: ‘Eliminating a memory is fairly simple, once you have the right tools’

The researcher in brain mechanisms talks about creating and destroying memories, something she has already managed to do in mice

JESÚS MÉNDEZ GONZÁLEZ

Barcelona – OCT 30, 2023 – 07:30 CET

She thought she wanted to be like the FBI agent played by Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. Instead, she has spent decades in a laboratory, studying how memories are made. Sheena Josselyn is a researcher at The Hospital for Sick Children, a professor at the University of Toronto and holds a Canada Research Chair in Brain Mechanisms Underlying Memory, among other positions. She was recently in Barcelona, Spain, where she presented the keynote lecture of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology congress before more than a thousand people. Her talk was titled “Making and breaking memories,” something her research group has managed to do in mice.

We talked with her about memory and memories, how they form and disappear and why we do not remember anything from before we were three years old; about new neurons, experiments that border on science fiction, and whether knowledge actually takes up space.

Question. You were going to study medicine, but in the end you chose psychology. You wanted to work in the clinic, and were even studying sex offenders in prison, but you ended up devoting your time to the molecular study of memory. What happened along the way?

Answer. At the beginning I wanted to go into medicine. I spent a summer working in my family doctor’s office as a receptionist, and I thought my job answering the phone and typing up letters was more exciting [than his]. I was looking for a hard question to try and answer. I studied psychology because it seems like a big question: how does the brain work? What is the mind? What is the brain? I was very much inspired by the movie The Silence of the Lambs and Jodie Foster’s character, who was a match for this sort of evil genius. And I thought that I would be Jodie Foster in real life and be a match for sex offenders. I was very junior on the team, but part of my job was to interview people that were getting ready for parole. But I never found my Anthony Hopkins [laughs]. So I went back to the brain, which has never, never been boring.

Q. And do we know what memory and memories are? Are they just synapses between neurons, electrical impulses?

A. That’s a huge question, what memory is. To be honest, we’re still a little clueless about what’s happening in the brain, and that’s a huge problem for us because there are so many brain problems in which memory can go wrong. There’s something like dementia or Alzheimer’s, but there are also things like depression, where we think that constant rumination of bad memories might be a contributing factor. And there’s much more that we don’t know. You can stimulate neurons that are not connected to each other through synapses and get something that looks like memory retrieval, which is amazing. So synapses are important, but where exactly is the memory held? We don’t know.

Q. The physical form in which memory is stored is called an engram, which is what you mainly study. In your talks you explain that this idea comes from ancient Greece, but it took a lot of effort to prove it, despite the logic that may be behind it. What is an engram?

A. An engram was first defined [in the early 20th century] in a sort of philosophical way, as the lasting trace of an experience in our brain. The definition has sort of undergone a little bit of a change. My definition is: the ensemble or the group of neurons that seem to be important in holding a memory. Some people questioned its existence, but they did not really propose an alternative theory.

Q. Some of those who tried to find it, such as psychologist Karl Lashley, came to the conclusion that memory was in all places in the brain and in no specific place at the same time. But now we know that there are different types of memory; that the same thing will not happen in my brain when I try to remember this room as in that of the person who wants to remember what they read in this interview. And we also hear a lot about the hippocampus, a specific area of the brain that we associate a lot with memory and that is often damaged in cases of Alzheimer’s. Was what Lashley said true then?

A. We think that the fundamental building blocks of a memory are the same, but they can be in different parts of the brain; we have different types of memory. If I remember how I ride a bike, that is a memory, certainly, because there is a previous experience I call upon when I want to ride a bike again. That’s a procedural memory, but it’s probably in another area of my brain as an episodic memory of something that happened to me. These types of [more biographical] memories do have a lot to do with the hippocampus.

I think [Lashley’s] was a logical conclusion because finding engrams is like finding a needle in a haystack, and at the time they just sort of burned down the whole haystack and said: it was in the haystack, yeah, but exactly where, they weren’t sure. Now we have much better tools to find it, we know that [the needles] are in specific places in most areas of the brain. And that each one communicates with many others. The brain is amazing, and within it there is massive communication, so even though one brain area might not be critically involved, it doesn’t mean this area isn’t listening to what’s going on.

Q. Your talk is titled “Making and breaking memories.” You and your group have been able to eliminate certain memories associated with fear in mice. How did you do it?

A. It’s fairly simple, once you have the right tools and you go about it the right way. We know that there’s a sparse set of neurons that are going to be involved in encoding and holding this memory [in their experiments they train mice to be afraid when hearing certain sounds], and we just biased which neurons are going to be allocated or recruited into this engram by exciting them a little bit before, using optogenetics, which is a cool way of manipulating neural excitability with light. Then we can inhibit them anytime later and that memory practically disappears.

Q. And you also tested it with the effects of cocaine on the brain, right?

A. Cocaine affects so many things in the brain and in the body, but we could localize a small portion of cells that were really important in the rewarding aspect of cocaine, and we used the same trick to allocate these neurons, and then we would silence them and it would be as if the mouse hadn’t experienced cocaine in that environment.

Q. Other groups have even been able to implant false memories, right?

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