As part of a project to understand how the brain learns, biologists have written memories into the cells of a fruitfly's brain, making it think it had a terrible experience.
The memory trace was written by shining light into the fly’s brain and activating a special class of cells involved in learning how to avoid an electric shock.
The goal of the research is not to give flies nightmares but rather to understand how learning in general works, from flies to people. “In the case of the fly, where we have a numerically rather simple nervous system that does something rather complex, I think we have a chance to break open the black box and understand it,” said Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford
This is very exciting because this research could be used to help those suffering from PTSD, depression and possibly anxiety disorders. It's a little scary too because if someone had nefarious intentions he/she could tamper with a people's memories, a la Total Recall. I think it's fascinating that scientists can map this out. I really do see a lot of future benefits in mental health issues.
We could do high school in a day....................
But the rapture will happen before anything as good as that -.-
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