CAJ: Neuroscience, Memory Implants

Imagine Alzheimer's disease, problems after a stoke, dementia or multiple sclerosis which cause severe memory loss for a person, would not be that huge of a problem in a not too distant future. Neuroscientist Theodore Berger's colleagues called him absolutely crazy when he told him about his plants to develop a silicon chip which imitates the signals neurons process in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the part of the brain which is responsible for formation and retrieval of long-term and short-term memories. So, what Berger did the last two decades of his life is, to find out haw neurons function in the hippocampus and, therefore, enable patients to have the ability to form new long-term memories. Which turned out to be more difficult than it sounds.

Berger and a team of scientist have conducted experiments on rabbits, rats and monkeys which was a great success. They discovered that a computer could establish a long-term memory code from input signals recorded in rats' brains while they learned a specific task. After the researchers dulled the animals' ability to form long-term memories, they fed their brains with this memory code and they were able to retrieve the "lost" memory again.

The next steps in Berger's research is to implant memory prothesis into animals, which could result in difficulties as these memory codes stem barely from mathematical equations. His goal for the near future is to design memory implants that will be beneficial for humans.

We all possess two hippocampi 

For more detailed information, you can read this article by Jon Cohen: 
Memory Implants 

In terms of ethos the author illustrates Theodore Berger as an utterly credible person in two ways. Firstly, he introduces Berger (and his idea) in a very convincing manner in mentioning that he is a biomedical engineer and a neuroscientist (wow!) and that he works at the University of Southern California in LA (not too bad either!). Secondly, the author emphasises multiple times how nobody believed Berger's idea to work out and how it in the end actually did. I believe that the second point does not support the ethos although it would if it was not mentioned that often.

Concerning the pathos the author did a quite good job in mentioning that these implants might help patients in a not too distant future. Also, in mentioning that Berger's colleagues thought him a lunatic and he proving the opposite, it somehow arouses empathy in the reader.

Finally, the logos is very plain in the article. Cohen describes, very understandably, what Berger's experiments are, how they work (or did not work) and why it might not work out in the future how Berger has planed it, as he might stumble across certain difficulties.



source: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513681/memory-implants/