Brain Implants Can Restore Long Term Memory Lost During Brain Injuries

Do you forget a lot? Do you have trouble recalling memories from your past? That experience in itself could be just a memory in five to ten years, which is when these brain implants are expected to be available to everyone. These implants are known one of the most exciting technology breakthroughs in 2013 thus far, and they can restore your long-term memory which has been lost due to brain damage, stroke or other injury. It’s like reverse-engineering memories.

I was skeptical when I first heard about this, and even though it sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, it’s true. You can click over to CNN or MIT Technology Review to read all the details. The doctors, scientists and researchers who have been working on this for years are overjoyed at this discovery. According to the CNN article, they “believe they have cracked how long-term memories are made, stored and retrieved and how to replicate this process in brains that are damaged, particularly by stroke or localized injury.”

The fact that it’s a brain implant won’t seem so strange by the time this is available to everyone. Right now, brain implants are used to treat epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease (amongst being used for other things). Over 80,000 people are walking around with brain implants in their heads, and they are being used more and more.

The first thing I thought of when I read about this was that it might be a way to help people with memory loss due to Alzheimer’s Disease. However, since that disease affects so many different parts of the brain, these implants won’t be as helpful. However, that could change as their research progresses. These brain implants could be particularly useful for men and women in the military who come back from their missions with brain trauma. This could help them recapture the long-term memories they’ve lost along the way as a result of those brain injuries. Exciting stuff!