Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [80]
“Great market, right? This country is obsessed with memory.”
He points out we are maniacal recorders of our own lives—photos, blogs, diaries, YouTube videos, and on and on. Memories have become a perverse way of immortalizing ourselves by looking backwards.
I have to concede this to him, but it still doesn’t all fit so neatly. “Where does the military come in?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Tell that to the papers after I broadcast it across the blogosphere.”
“Hear me out.”
“Khe Sahn,” I say, a seeming non sequitur.
I remember that I’d seen an ornery short man leave the dental offices wearing a Vietnam vet’s insignia. It strikes me that the military’s interest involves modifying memories of military personnel. I tell this to Chuck.
“You’re dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder,” I venture.
“Hear me out.”
He hits a button on his computer and the presentation brings up its first slide. It’s an elderly man, with thin white hair and stooped shoulders, playing on a computer. G.I. Chuck hits the button again, magnifying the image of the computer screen the old man is looking at. In the middle of the screen is a query: Tell me about your experiences in high school.
That’s not the interesting part.
What’s odd are the numerous images and statements surrounding the prompt. At the top is a ticker of information, like a news crawl on CNN. It reads: “PLAY GAMES ANYTIME YOU WANT,” and “THANKS FOR BEING PART OF THE CRUSADE.” On the right is an airplane trailing a banner that says: “Nice Chevrolet!” Filling out the screen are a half dozen multi-colored butterflies. It’s chaos—digital overload.
It helps explains Grandma’s transcripts.
“Heavy sensory input,” I say. “Big deal. We get it all the time.”
“The conventional wisdom is that we enhance our mental capacities through regular use,” he says. “That our brain is a veritable muscle that we can build through exercise.”
“That was the hope of ADAM.”
“Of what?”
“Biogen’s software: Advanced Development and Memory.”
“Right. Nicely synthesized.”
I can’t tell if he’s patronizing me.
He explains that for years, Biogen—along with every other biotech company—has been working on anti-dementia drugs. They’ve got an interesting traditional drug in the pipeline. They believed they could increase the drug’s effectiveness by stimulating the brain through computer use. If they could prove that theory, it would be an incredible scientific breakthrough, to say nothing of a multibillion-dollar entrepreneurial one.
It’s a powerful thought, but not at all inconsistent with a host of recent neurological developments.
I recently blogged about researchers at Stanford using real-time MRIs to develop new ways to treat chronic pain. In the studies, patients experiencing pain were shown images of their brains with the regions of the brain lit up that were affected—activated by heavy blood flow—during the pain episode. The researchers sought to coax patients to meditate, breathe, and use other tactics to diminish the size of the affected area.
Separately, I’ve written about research into the effects of compulsive computer use on the brain almost since my first postings. The research shows, at the least, that the heavy and regular stimulation generates neuro-chemicals linked to addiction. And, more broadly, researchers have discovered in the last few years that the brain is much more plastic than we ever previously thought.
So why not study what happens to the brain’s memory center during computer use? Why not try to stimulate neuro-chemicals that facilitate memory retention? After all, memory is an essential part of the human experience and the thing we are losing at an alarming rate.
Although I’m not buying the whole story, big parts make sense.
“What went wrong?” I ask.
Chuck brings up the next slide. It’s an image of the brain. Two small, banana-shaped regions in the center of the brain are highlighted,