SECTION T N oday AME Psychology
MEMORY INC.
1
BY YASH SHAH
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CREB? It’s a molecule that dwells inside a brain cell, and it serves to trigger protein synthesis for new synaptic connections which become permanent memories...it’s a brain cell’s own Velcro
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“THE LITTLE RED PILL,” as Eric Kandel calls it, helps us tackle age-related memory loss. Memory Pharmeuciticals, Eric Kandel’s company, is working on exactly that. However, the history of the research put into this pill dates all the way back to the year 1953, when the view on everything we knew about the brain changed drastically. In Hartford, Connecticut, Dr. Scoville worked as a neurosurgeon and operated on Henry, a young man facing epilepsy. Dr. Scoville’s approach to curing Henry invovled eliminating the hippocampus, the part of the brain which caused the seizures. After the surgery, despite the fact that the seizures disappeared, it was found that the hippocampus was the “royal seat for rememebering,” thus diabling him from creating new memories. This meant that although he would be able to recognize his mother, he would easily forget the nurse who just intoduced herself in a matter of minutes. Yet, despite this tragedy which would leave Henry no comfort, it resulted in a number of psychological advances. Dr. Scoville, to begin with, made his contribution by concluding that Karl Lashley was wrong. Karl Lashley, a dominant neuropsychologist, had concluded that memory was scattered throughout the cortex rather than being localized to a specific part of the brain. According to Henry’s case, it became clear that memory could be pinpointed like a country on a map. Brenda Milner, to move on, used Henry’s case to identify the seperate memory systems that exist in our minds. Actions like brushing our teeth, or walking, is also stored in our minds as memory. However, since Henry was still able to brush his teeth, when given a toothbrush, and walk, it proved that our brain is divided so each part serves a specific funtion. Procedural memory exists to store motor
skills.; Semantic memory for facts; Declarative memory for our identity. These discoveries due to Henry’s loss of his hippocampus made an impression on Kandel which interested him into the field of neuropsychology as opposed to his original aspiration to become a psychoanalyst. As a reductionist, he chose to start his first experiments on aplysia, a giant marine snail which has only 20,000 neurons. This experiment only focused on the implicit or procedural memory of the slugs. Through this, he discovered that neurons had links, called synapses, which grew stronger by passing electro chemical signals that reinforced the relationship. These signals were produced as a behavior was repeated, hence proving the “use-it-or-lose-it credo.” Through these relationships between neurons, Kandel believed there was a mechanism that allowed for conversion of short to long term memories. Blocking the CREB molecule in one of the neurons disrupted this conversation, thus erasing the memory. He concluded that it was the CREB gene which allowed the conversion of memories. In addition, Kandel stated that “mice offered a superb genetic system for examining the role of individual genes in synaptic modification on the one hand, and intact behavior - explicit memory storage - on the other,” to which he focused the rest of his research on the hippocampus. Subsequent to this, Kandel’s company today researches into this “red pill” for enhancing CREB and avoid memory loss due to age. However, the pill creates obvious issues with ethics. What if the pill creates a kind of nostalgic incontinence? What if we are unable to control the mental clutter it brings forth? There are just some of the arguements presented against this pill, but the main question still stands, “Will you take the pill?”
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