Professor Tim Bliss believes the human brain could be implanted with memories
The scenario sounds like science fiction, but it could actually happen in the near future, Professor Tim Bliss believes.
In 1973, Prof Bliss, working with and a Norwegian colleague, laid down the first detailed description of a brain process called long-term potentiation (LTP), now known to underpin learning and memory.
He and two other British scientists working in the same field are this year’s winners of the coveted Brain Prize, regarded as the “Nobel prize for neuroscience”.
Prof Bliss, 75, from the Francis Crick Institute in London, said it was only a matter of time before memory was fully understood and mastered.
He said: “Could we instil memories which we didn’t actually have? When we talk about this we sometimes call it the Marilyn Monroe experiment... “
He explained he was alive during Monroe’s heyday.
Speculating about the future benefits brain research might bring, he said: “I could have met her. Maybe I did.
"Maybe I could go along to the synapse surgeon and say ‘Please instil in me a memory of the night I spent with Marilyn’ and he would say, ‘sure, give me your cheque book’.
"In theory that’s possible. In practice, of course, we can’t do it now, but I’m not saying that could never happen.”
Fellow prize winner Professor Graham Collingridge, 61, from the University of Bristol, pointed out while many memories were good, it would be helpful to remove those that are bad.
“The classic example would be post traumatic stress disorder and another example would be chronic pain, which is a form of memory,” he said.
The third member of the group, Professor Richard Morris, 67, of the University of Edinburgh, looked at how understanding memory could help fight Alzheimer’s.
All three scientists had carried out research involving LTP, the life-long process by which synaptic connections in the hippocampus brain region are strengthened by experiences.
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