When a loved one dies, they leave behind personal belongings, but what happens to their life experiences? Could we ever recover memories from the brain of someone who has died?
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Recovering some parts of memories may be possible, but it is likely to be technically difficult, said Don Arnold, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California.
With today's technology, memory retrieval can be done by first identifying the set of brain cells, or neurons, that encoded a particular memory in the brain and understanding how they are connected. These neurons can then be activated to create an approximate neural network, a machine learning algorithm that mimics how the brain.
Memories are encoded by groups of neurons, Arnold said. Short-term and long-term memories are formed in the hippocampus. Other parts of the brain store different aspects of a memory, such as emotions and other sensory details, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Groups of neurons associated with a single memory leave a physical trace in the brain called an engram.
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Neuroscientists have identified engrams in the hippocampi of mouse brains. If scientists had a complete model of the human brain (which they don't yet have), they could theoretically pinpoint the location of the memory they wanted to retrieve, Arnold said.
But human memories can be complex, especially long-term memories that may be linked to locations, relationships or skills, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Retrieving memories from a deceased person is even more complicated because the distinct parts of a memory are scattered throughout the brain.
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The best neural network model would require a lifetime of brain scans of someone remembering repeated events. Then perhaps, you could use the neural network to recreate a specific memory after someone dies. However, that assumes that memories are a static thing, like a file on a hard drive that replays a series of events. Instead, memory is dynamic. So, for now at least, a lifetime of memories will die with the person who experienced them.
Source: livescience
