Brain implant could restore lost memory

US military researchers have revealed that in the next few months, they will unveil new advances toward developing a brain implant that could one day restore a wounded soldier's memory.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is forging ahead with a four-year plan to build a sophisticated memory stimulator, as part of President Barack Obama's 100 million-dollar initiative to better understand the human brain, Discovery News reported.

The science has never been done before, and raises ethical questions about whether the human mind should be manipulated in the name of staving off war injuries or managing the ageing brain.

Some say that those who could benefit include the five million Americans with Alzheimer's disease and the nearly 300,000 US military men and women who have sustained traumatic brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

DARPA program manager Justin Sanchez said this week at a conference in the US capital convened by the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas, said that they think they could develop neuroprosthetic devices that can directly interface with the hippo-campus, and can restore the first type of memories which are the declarative memories.

Declarative memories are recollections of people, events, facts and figures, and no research has ever shown they can be put back once they are lost. 

 

 

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Weight loss can boost memory

Shedding pounds can not only make you healthier, it may 

also improve your memory, a new study has claimed. 

Memory improves in older, overweight women after they 

lose weight by dieting, and their brain activity actually 

changes in the regions of the brain that are important for 

memory tasks, researchers said.

"Our findings suggest that obesity-associated impairments 

in memory function are reversible, adding incentive for 

weight loss," said lead author.

The researchers randomly assigned 20 overweight, 

post-menopausal women (average age, 61) to one of two 

healthy weight loss diets for six months. Nine women used 

the Paleolithic diet, also called the Caveman diet, which was 

composed of 30 per cent protein, 30 per cent carbohydrates 

and 40 per cent unsaturated fats.

The other 11 women followed the Nordic Nutrition 

Recommendations of a diet containing 15 per cent protein, 

55 per cent carbs and 30 per cent fats. Before and after the 

diet, the investigators measured the women's body mass 

index (BMI) and body fat composition. They also tested the 

subjects' episodic memory by instructing them to memorise 

unknown pairs of faces and names presented on a screen 

during functional MRI.

The name for this process of creating new memory is 

encoding. Later, the women again saw the facial images 

along with three letters. Their memory retrieval task, during 

functional MRI, was to indicate the correct letter that 

corresponded to the first letter of the name linked to the face.

The group's average BMI decreased from 32.1 before the diet 

to 29.2 (below the cut off for obesity) after six months of 

dieting, and their average weight dropped from 85 to 77.1 

kilogrammes, researchers said. Memory performance 

improved after weight loss, and author said the brain-

activity pattern during memory testing reflected this 

improvement.

After weight loss, brain activity reportedly increased during 

memory encoding in the brain regions that are important 

for identification and matching of faces. "The altered brain 

activity after weight loss suggests that the brain becomes 

more active while storing new memories and therefore 

needs fewer brain resources to recollect stored information,"  

he said. 


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