The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever - By Jonah Lehrer
This new model of memory isn’t just a theory—neuroscientists actually have a molecular explanation of how and why memories change. In fact, their definition of memory has broadened to encompass not only the cliché cinematic scenes from childhood but also the persisting mental loops of illnesses like PTSD and addiction—and even pain disorders like neuropathy. Unlike most brain research, the field of memory has actually developed simpler explanations. Whenever the brain wants to retain something, it relies on just a handful of chemicals. Even more startling, an equally small family of compounds could turn out to be a universal eraser of history, a pill that we could take whenever we wanted to forget anything.
And researchers have found one of these compounds.
In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.
- Memortation, Or One Way To Put What You Learn To Practical Use
This is a post I’ve been meaning to do for a while. After seeing that my friend Miguel is bringing back Simoleon Sense and listening to an interviewmy friend Shane over at Farnam Street recently did, I was inspired to quit procrastinating and put up...
- Moonwalking With Einstein
Chris over at The View from the Blue Ridge posted a great excerpt from the book Moonwalking with Einstein, which is pasted below. That book may have been the most useful one I've read over the past couple of years from an investing standpoint, as...
- Bill Gates Reviews “moonwalking With Einstein”
Sometimes people have suggested that I’ve got a “photographic memory,” particularly when I’m talking about topics that interest me, like science and business. It’s a nice compliment, but it’s not really true. Not even close. For example, my...
- When Memory Commits An Injustice – By Jonah Lehrer
Eyewitness mistakes lead to tragic errors in court, but new methods could help The biggest lie of human memory is that it feels true. Although our recollections seem like literal snapshots of the past, they're actually deeply flawed reconstructions,...
- Nassim Taleb On Memory
"Conventional wisdom holds that memory is like a serial recording device like a computer diskette. In reality, memory is dynamic—not static—like a paper on which new texts (or new versions of the same text) will be continuously recorded, thanks to...