• solstice@lemmy.world
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    1 year 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.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

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

      • solstice@lemmy.world
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        1 year 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)

  • froghorse@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Have you ever entered a room and forgot why you came in?

    How about your dreams at night? Or what you had for dinner last month?

    I think that memory-deletion is much more common than we think. Like vast invisible whales floating through your living room.

    Of course we’d never know it.

      • froghorse@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        For every memory that you noticed you forgot there are a thousand that you forgot without noticing. I’m guessing here.

      • froghorse@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You ever read “there is no anti-memetics division” by qntm?

        It’s good science fiction . He explores the subject of memory, deleting memory, etc. They have drugs for erasing memory, drugs for making it so you can’t forget, demons that eat memory, certain kinds of information that resist being remembered… It’s fascinating stuff.

      • froghorse@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I wonder if a general approach to inducing amnesia would be the best approach.

        I think that we always take what we’ve got - what we see, memories - no matter how flimsy, and stitch together a plausible narrative from that.

        So the amnesia doesn’t have to be very precise. Our amnesiator could basically be just a brain damage ray

  • Xusontha@ls.buckodr.ink
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    1 year 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…

  • Savvy95@lemmy.world
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    1 year 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!

  • Efwis@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

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

    • UnendingQuest@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

    • solstice@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

  • 🦄🦄🦄@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Humans experimenting on weaker animals has peak fashist vibes.

    “bUt iTs oNLy a SnAiL” yeah and before anything happens on humand they will experiment on mammals.

      • Wogi@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There was a period during the Chinese Communist revolution that basically labeled a lot of modern science as capitalist propaganda.

        There’s a book series that starts with that event, and is the inciting event that caused a group of scientists to basically invite a hostile race of aliens to earth to wipe out and rebuild society.

        I forget the name, it’s by Cixin Liu

        Edit: The Three Body Problem is the first book

    • Femcowboy@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Call me Hitler but it’s only a snail. If this can erase my dad strangling me or watching someone shoot themself from my brain IDC how many invertebrates die for it.

      • 🦄🦄🦄@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        How many dogs and chimpanzees are you willing to murder for the human trial to fail in phase 2?

        • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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          1 year ago

          This may be tough to hear but some poeple don’t give a shit about animals.

          Is that arrogant? Fuck yes. Is it hypocritical? From most people, yes. Is it wrong? Lol no, humanity rules over earth and I really don’t see why we should (potentially) torture our own population in experiments rather than species that largely lack self awareness and often have problems with object permanence.

          Animals are animals and unless one of them writes me an essay about how all of this is wrong in its own language I won’t change my mind on that. The only species coming even remotely close to us in intellect and mind are dolphins and octopi, neither of which are commonly used for animal trials of anything except puzzles.

    • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Would you prefer all medicines and other technologies skip trials and go straight to the counter?