Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

lofgren777 t1_j5y6roz wrote

Not in our lifetime.

The problem with these kinds of interfaces is that they would have to be totally personalized. Your brain has some preprogrammed behaviors, but mostly it starts with crude structures and then learns to do stuff like store and recall memories from practice. This means that while everybody's memories are stored the same way, it's not like you could ever transfer one memory from one person to another.

You would have to break the memory down into component parts and have the receiver's brain rebuild them for itself, and even then it might have some of the same elements but it would not be the same memory. All of our memories also consist of details that we fill in based on assumptions and experiences, which the receiving brain would do differently.

Recalling your own memories is probably easier than transferring memories, but faces many of the same challenges.

In any event, I do not believe that we will ever be able to do this with a memory that was not recorded specifically for this purpose. The noise in the brain is just too great to isolate a specific memory if we weren't watching it happen the first time it was recorded.

Before we get to reliving memories, we will have devices to stimulate new experiences based on random combinations of memories, which will be used for therapy like overcoming PTSD.

2