Snip from the NOVA documentary “Memory Hackers”, which aired on February 10, 2016 at PBS. Dr Julia Shaw wrote a book on the science of memory hacking: “The Memory Illusion” will be available starting June 2nd from Penguin Random House.
Btw: I warmly recommend to read The Machine written by James Smythe. It’s a neogothic scifi chamber play about broken love, the implications of nascent neurotech, dementia and domestic abuse. One of my favorite scifi stories in recent years:
Haunting memories defined him. The machine took them away. She vowed to rebuild him. From the author of The Testimony comes a Frankenstein for the twenty-first century.
Beth lives alone on a desolate housing estate near the sea. She came here to rebuild her life following her husband’s return from the war. His memories haunted him but a machine promised salvation. It could record memories, preserving a life that existed before the nightmares.
Now the machines are gone. The government declared them too controversial, the side-effects too harmful. But within Beth’s flat is an ever-whirring black box. She knows that memories can be put back, that she can rebuild her husband piece by piece.