Huh?
MIT scientists implant a false memory into a mouse’s brain
Sometime soon, a lab mouse could wake up thinking he had snuggled up to a girl mouse the night before. But he hadn’t. The memory would be fake.
Scientists have successfully implanted a false memory into a mouse’s brain — a seemingly far-fetched idea reminiscent of a science fiction film.
“If mice had Hollywood, this would be ‘Inception’ for them,” said one of the lead researchers, MIT neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, whose study was published online Thursday in the journal Science.
Ramirez and his colleagues tagged brain cells associated with a specific memory and then tweaked that memory to make the mouse believe something had happened when it hadn’t.