How Scientists Used Light to Incept Sensations and Memories in Mice

Last week, Elon Musk’s mysterious Neuralink finally revealed their master plan after two years of silence: to build high bandwidth, immune resistant, thread-like brain-machine interfaces that can be robotically implanted into the brain. In theory, the implant could allow computers to replace faulty circuits or augment healthy ones. An even more ambitious future, if technologically possible, is to give the brain direct access to the massive database that is the internet—potentially “downloading” information, or even experiences, into neural circuits with tailored and targeted electrical zaps. Sound fanciful? Not to burst your bubble, but yes, it is. For now, those ideas venture dangerously into sci-fi territory. Yet DARPA has been experimenting with offloading human memories onto silicon chips, to deliver them back into the brain to boost function when injured. Even wilder, scientists have already written artificial memories, emotions, and sensations into mouse brains—in some cases, without the animal ever actually seeing, smelling, or sensing the thing that they’re “experiencing.” To be very clear: the goal of artificial memory research isn’t to tamper with anyone’s mind. Rather, it’s an enormously powerful way to understand the neuronal ensembles and circuits that underlie basic brain computations and behaviors. Here’s the current inception playbook. One strategy is at the neural circuit level; the other directly goes for the brain’s basic computational unit—individual neurons. Neither is perfect, but they do illustrate what’s already scientifically possible. Shining Light on Fear and Love Our loves and hates are fundamental to our personalities. Thanks to decades of research deciphering those neural circuits, it’s now possible to artificially program those drives into the mouse brain. The first attempt was in 2013, from Nobel Prize winner Dr. Susumu Tonegawa’s lab at MIT. Using optogenetics, a revolutionary technology that lets scientists genetically engineer neurons in mice with light, the team […]

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