Jamie's Blog

Friday, April 06, 2007

Cybernetic memory



Back in the 90s a movie came out called Johnny Mnemonic. The movie was based on a short story of the same name by William Gibson. The short story is actually pretty good, and if you haven't read it, you should. William Gibson writes some of the best cyberpunk stories out there. The movie adaptation sadly wasn't very good. In fact, I would say it was really awful, despite having Keanu Reeves in the staring role.
But all that aside, both the movie and the short story share a common theme, the storage of memories in an implanted cybernetic module hardwired to a persons brain.

It seems that a neuroscientist, Ted Berger, has created the first artificial memory chips and found a way to connect them to living brain cells. He currently has them interacting with rat brain cells. This is the first step towards truly cybernetic enhancement of our own brains. Ted Berger initially sees this as a tool for people with extensive brain damage who seem to have memory problems.

Read the full story at Popular Science: The Memory Hacker

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