The Future of Memory: From Learning to Installation

Without friction, life would cease to exist. 

This oppositional force is a necessity for many things downstream of it. From the movement of muscle to the spark from the strike of a match, its presence is indispensable. So when people ask me about “installing” memory in humans, I get a little miffed. If all knowledge can be reduced to a simple lookup, life would be so much simpler. But would it mean anything? It’s the tension of attempting to connect information and making it your own that makes memory more powerful. 

For theory’s sake, however, I want to explore the idea of memory in the discrete sense, akin to semantic memory. We’ve always seen memory as something earned through repetition or intuition. But what if it won’t always be that way? The implications go beyond human augmentation and into rehabilitation. Can we intervene against memory loss? Restore function for individuals afflicted by neurodegenerative illnesses? 

What if we could rewrite, install, or transfer memory like software? Brain-computer interfaces and memory prosthetics are becoming increasingly capable and they may eventually revolutionize how we encode, store and access knowledge. This post considers the implications of such advancements, and offers a review of where the field is on this.

The Dream of Instant Recall 

If recorded history is anything to go by, the human spirit has attempted to preserve and to remember for a long time. From cave paintings and stone tablets to SSDs and cloud backup servers, we’ve constantly probed for technologies to boost our fragile memories and put them into physical mediums. In this respect, we’ve seen some success (see: Microsoft’s Project Silica).

Popular media has long imagined what brain-computer interfaces might enable. Limitless (2011) has a simple premise–say a man takes a pharmaceutical and he develops perfect recall. What happens next? Turns out, perfect memory and cognitive processing unlocks a lot. In Lucy (2014), the titular character, played by Scarlett Johannson, incidentally gets enough of a drug that, according to the film, will allow her to access 100% of her brain’s potential. The result is baffling. Lucy transcends the bounds of reality and is able to bend it to her will. It’s genuinely aweing to consider: if I could use more of my brain, I could maybe do telekinesis??? It’s misleading to say we only use 10% of our brain at any given time however. 

These films oversimplify, reducing the brain to a glorified hard drive or USB. They make it seem “hackable,” and that perfect recall and photographic memory are achievable upgrades. However, memory is more than just information. It includes context and tangles of emotion! Recalling a memory doesn’t just mean recalling an index card with text of “what happened” on it. To recall is to relive. That said, is discrete, functional knowledge transferrable? 

What is our current understanding of how memory works? 

Everything you see, smell, touch, and taste is a part of the external world. Our bodies have the ability to take the physical aspects of this world and convert them into an electrical signal that our brains can then interpret as things like the smell of rain, or the color red. One of the “hard problems of consciousness” is in fact related to this. How does physical process lead to subjective experience? 

Where is the technology today?

While we are still a ways off from achieving a satisfying, complete export of human memory, researchers are making progress on untangling the mechanisms which could inform future efforts. Ted Berger’s work on neural implants have showed promising results on rodent models for memory. On a non-invasive front, labs are studying how something like transcanial magnetic stimulation, with its magnetic field pulses, could offer memory boosting effects. We’re even able to use light to control gene expression via optogenetics.

As we can see, installing or downloading memory isn’t feasible. Yet, we’re getting much closer at figuring out what circuits and pathways are involved in memory and how selective re-activation of these pathways can help restore some function.

That’s all for today, thanks for reading! I love answering and researching your questions so if you have a topic you’re curious about, please send it my way. I’ll consider looking into it.

Take care,
Eashan