The Ethical Implications of Using Memory Implants to Treat Mental Illnesses
As memory implantation technology develops, we must address its bioethical concerns.
Our memories essentially define us. The faces we recognize, the names we remember, and even the feelings we experience when eating our favorite food, are all linked to our memories. These powerful and important recollections are, simply put, the reactivation of specific neurons — cells that transmit messages throughout the body — that have grown strong links between each other. But scientists can potentially manipulate and erase these specific clusters of neurons, so precious to our identity, through the recent advancements in memory implantation — a scientific process where researchers erase an individual’s memories or make them recall something that never happened.
However, this procedure and its potential application on humans raise various ethical concerns, all rooted in the question that strikes many of us today: “Has innovation gone too far?”
Due to its potential, identity-altering impact scientists must work to mitigate the procedure’s invasiveness and lack of accessibility when implementing it on humans. Such dilemmas prompt scientists, like Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu, to investigate safer applications of memory implantation.
Ramirez and Liu led an experiment that artificially manipulated the memories of a mouse using optogenetics — a method that alters the memory-related neurons previously mentioned, by making them function like a lamp. Inserting a gene that reacts to light, or a light-sensitive gene, into the neurons causes them to switch on like a lamp when lasers or strong light is shone on them.
Changing one’s recollections requires performing this technique on one’s engrams, which are theorized to be clusters of neurons that function like ‘memory containers.’ The activation of these engrams means that they, in a sense, become ‘illusionists’; their activation tricks the brain into believing that it is ‘reliving’ the memory that the activated engram stores.
Ramirez and Liu implemented this process on a mouse by injecting a biochemical substance that made specific cells light-sensitive. They kept track of these cells, which would eventually store the memories that Liu and Ramirez manufactured into it; letting the mouse roam in a box allowed the researchers to engineer simple memories in the mouse’s brain.
The next day, the mouse roamed in another box — with a completely different shape, color and scent. As mentioned earlier, activated engrams are like illusionists; when Ramirez and Liu shone a laser on the light-sensitive engrams that stored the mouse’s memory of its experiences in the initial box, the mouse’s brain believed it was roaming in that box, instead of the one it was truly in. In this tricked state, it was given a foot shock, making it believe that the initial box is dangerous.
As a result, after placing the mouse back into the initial box, it froze in fear, thinking that it would be shocked again, despite never having been harmed there.
Although the human brain is much more complex than that of a mouse, memory implantation could potentially be used to treat various human mental illnesses and disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and PTSD. For instance, optogenetics could be used on the engrams of individuals with Alzheimer’s, so that their forgotten memories can be reactivated with light, and thus, be recalled better. The process of memory manipulation demonstrated in the experiment, could be used on individuals with PTSD, where the traumatic components of their memory could be replaced with positive ones.
Despite the countless potential benefits of this procedure, there are unavoidable ethical concerns that must be addressed, with the most apparent one being the invasiveness of this process. In one sense, memory implantation is like a “a continuum of technologies,” as “there is in fact the […] low-tech, pretty cheap, and easily accessible” method of using substances, like alcohol, to forget memories, says Lisa S. Parker, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pittsburgh. Therefore, the process of changing human memories in itself is not an entirely foreign approach that drastically challenges our standards of mental invasiveness.
However, as mentioned earlier, because of the large role memories play in our identity, there will still be an undoubtedly large amount of control given to the specialist performing this procedure. Such power can be threatening to the patient’s “sense of authenticity and authorship of life,” says Parker. She proposes that a potential way to ensure that patients will retain control over their lives is to integrate this procedure into “the patient’s whole story.” This means that patients should be completely aware of the fact that certain memories were erased or altered so that they “can always say I had memories that I don’t have access to now, but back, you know, a year ago, [I did].” Scientists should also work to create a procedure that allows patients to retrieve their memories back, or ‘undo’ the effects of the procedure if they would like to.
Allowing patients to have this awareness of their memories before the procedure and also giving them a chance to “get them back,” would help ensure that they feel like their identity was not undermined in the process. This level of control is kind of parallel to a patient taking prescribed drugs, since they can typically choose to stop taking them, just as a patient of a memory implantation should be able to willfully remove the memory alterations.
Another prominent concern regarding this innovation, like many other medical procedures, is its accessibility. Since memory implantation through high-tech means is essentially the “very expensive, fewer side effects, and very precise” method of memory alteration compared to the similar, alternative process of using alcohol, it could potentially and very likely, exacerbate inequalities within healthcare.
Unfortunately, Parker explains that “if it isn’t offered as part of a basket of potential health related interventions that would be covered by insurance or a […] universal health care system, then it would exacerbate disparities, like anything else.”
Nonetheless, because this is “this is a product of our capitalist system or the way that we develop drugs and so on” as “long as there is that potential to profit,” more “progress will unfold into the future.” With, of course, the ethical concerns in mind, this progress is certainly still important especially because of the central role memories play in our society.
Parker mentions that even if researchers decide not to implement this process on humans, that knowledge they gain on “how memories are formed and how changeable they are is valuable, because we’re incarcerating people, and ending their lives as they know them, based on people’s memories of events.” As long as this research works toward diminishing its potential maluses, it could give us a better understanding of both our everyday interactions and social systems.
