editing memory

Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory
by Benedict Carey for The New York Times, April 5th, 2009

excerpt:
"How on earth can a clump of tissue possibly capture and store everything — poems, emotional reactions, locations of favorite bars, distant childhood scenes? The idea that experience leaves some trace in the brain goes back at least to Plato’s Theaetetus metaphor of a stamp on wax, and in 1904 the German scholar Richard Semon gave that ghostly trace a name: the engram.

What could that engram actually be?

The answer, previous research suggests, is that brain cells activated by an experience keep one another on biological speed-dial, like a group of people joined in common witness of some striking event. Call on one and word quickly goes out to the larger network of cells, each apparently adding some detail, sight, sound, smell. The brain appears to retain a memory by growing thicker, or more efficient, communication lines between these cells.

The billion-dollar question is how?"

Molecules. Everything comes down to molecules. Can they be considered the world's smallest beings? Yes, smaller things are known to us (atoms, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc) but do they have active lives, reasons to live, in themselves? Molecules seem exceptional, more purposeful. They have different identities and defined roles in the world- or do I just think this because the matter they compose seem more alive, even if they are not? Am I talking about the part or the whole?

Some time ago, I learned that all living things are made of cells, that cells are made of molecules, and molecules made of atoms. For some reason, atoms don't seem to have any personality of their own. Is it that while all things are made of atoms, not all things are made of molecules? Would it be true to say that only complex things are made of molecules? or that molecules always compound into complex matter? What scale am I even talking about? Atoms are incredibly complicated and energetic and the object of much concentrated study. I suppose molecules are associated more with biology and living things. Maybe that's why I think they are alive and leading interesting lives.

(Should I be equating "personality" and "complexity" with each other and with life and being? I'm not sure. I'm not really going anywhere with this anyway. I'm not sure what I even mean by personality, complexity, or life...)

In chemistry, an element is matter composed of only one type of atom- it cannot be broken down into simpler forms. Basic, inert, seemingly ineffectual in isolation- i.e. lithium, sodium, zinc - these substances are lifeless when not reacting to things external to themselves. They exist in a vacuum of sorts. On the other hand, molecules, formed when different atoms are combined in fixed ratios, can almost be seen to have a certain kind of existence of their own- complete with roles to play, jobs to do, expectations to fulfill. (this whole thought coming out of reading the brain/memory article and with the intention to researching more in depth/writing about scent molecules soon in the back of my mind). In my mind, molecules are alive in the same way a tree is alive, and atoms are dead in the same way a piece of plastic never lives.

Water molecules are particularly exciting. I remember marveling (being told to marvel?) when learning about its complex and paradoxical nature. (ice, its solid form, floats! and I remember learning something special about their magnetic polarized bondage to one another). And water in general is just kind of beautiful and lively and alive on its own.