• ivanafterall
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      202 years ago

      I agree. But I also wouldn’t mind forgetting one or two things. However, I’ve also watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so I know it ends with me having perpetual dementia-like fever dreams.

    • @[email protected]
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      402 years ago

      Potential PTSD treatment. I think this is the plot to a movie or book though, where soldiers are taken advantage of.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        There was definitely a Black Mirror about it.

        Sidenote: It’s weird to me that more people don’t talk about the inevitability of that one with the soldiers with cybernetic HUD implants that, shocking twist later, can make civilians look like monsters to be purged.

        On the other hand, why bother when the Boston Dynamics murderbots are probably cheaper?

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        I think I read the book you mention! I thought about it recently but could not remember the name

  • Patapon Enjoyer
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    72 years ago

    I can give snails brain (ganglia?) damage too, you’re not that special, scientists.

  • Xusontha
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    322 years ago

    I think the scientists are more worried about why the snail’s head is the size of a human rather than the memory loss…

  • @[email protected]
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    492 years ago

    It reminds me of that old joke of the 2 scientists studying a fly.

    Scientist 1: Fly, fly! Scientist 2: When fly has two wings fly flies 2 feet.

    Scientist 1: pulls off one wing and says Fly, Fly! Scientist 2: When fly has 1 wing, fly flies 1 foot

    Scientist 1: pulls off the other wing and says, Fly, fly!. Nothing happens Scientist 1 Fly, Fly! Nothing happens Scientist 1 showing frustration> FLY! FLY! Scientist 2: When fly has no wings, fly becomes deaf.

    Bad-dum!

    • The Picard ManeuverOPM
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      172 years ago

      Oh no, they fried the part of their brain that could tell the difference between snails and humans!

  • @[email protected]
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    472 years ago

    Since the comments all appear to be juvenile Reddit style jokes, here’s TFA (the frickin article: https://futurism.com/scientists-selectively-erased-memories-in-snails-are-we-next#

    Note, I’m not a scientist.

    As I suspected it appears they tortured the snails somehow (my guess is electric shock) to create traumatic memories. This has been done with caterpillars I think to see if they retain memories after turning into butterflies and they do, despite basically turning into primordial goop in the cocoon. They do, and it’s tested by seeing if they retain aversions to certain areas of their cages that are electrified.

    Then something about enzymes created which associate memory with pain and being able to target them.

    Pretty cool, and I for one definitely have a few traumas I’d like erased.

    • @[email protected]
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      202 years ago

      Pretty cool, and I for one definitely have a few traumas I’d like erased.

      It’s kinda neat, but I for one do not want to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind become a documentary. I mean I like the movie and all…but.

    • Sippy Cup
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      82 years ago

      We can kinda do that. There are therapies that target trauma and recontextualize them. Look up EMDR, it’s really cool stuff.

      • @[email protected]
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        52 years ago

        There is debate about how the therapy works and whether it is more effective than other established treatments.[1][5] The eye movements have been criticized as having no scientific basis.[6] The founder promoted the therapy for the treatment of PTSD, and proponents employed untestable hypotheses to explain negative results in controlled studies.[7] EMDR has been characterized as a pseudoscientific purple hat therapy (i.e., only as effective as its underlying therapeutic methods without any contribution from its distinctive add-ons).[8]

        I read about that fifteen years ago and dismissed it as pseudoscience. Wikipedia confirms. Pass (thanks though, don’t mean to be rude)

  • @[email protected]
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    52 years ago

    My question is, how do they know what a snail is thinking or remembers? Last I knew snails didn’t talk.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 years ago

      I read a study once about caterpillars getting shocked in their cages to teach them which areas are electrified. They retained this memory aversion after turning into butterflies. Probably something similar, basic behavioral observations to stimuli.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 years ago

      Probably something like the snail learned to find food in a certain place, then they were able to make it forget such that it would search randomly instead of going to the place it had learned.