Results tagged “memory”

Amazing. 34-year-old British artist, Stephen Wiltshire, who was diagnosed with autism at an early age, is currently taking residence at Pratt to do what he does best: draw. But not just draw; the artist is creating a detailed panorama of New York's skyline from memory, after only briefly visiting the city and taking it all in from a helicopter. He has done this around the world, 8 times in total, and says this is his finale.

Researchers at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center say they've prompted rodents to forget painful memories by injecting them with a drug called ZIP, which interferes with a neural substance integral memory functions. So it's only a matter of time before you'll be able to pop a pill and forget all about that photo of the Chinese guy's tumors or Lindsay Lohan's awkward appearance with Lily Allen! The Times has a feature on the Brooklyn lab today, as part of a series on brain research. According to Dr. Todd Sacktor, mice who had previously learned to avoid an electrified area of their cage forgot all about the zap zone after a dose of ZIP, and rats forgot about their disgust for a taste that had made them sick. Sacktor believes the drug could one day be used effectively with humans, and a variant of it could also enhance memory. But Dr. Steven E. Hyman, a neurobiologist at Harvard, is urging caution: "We know that people already use smart drugs and performance enhancers of all kinds, so a substance that actually improved memory could lead to an arms race... This possibility of memory editing has enormous possibilities and raises huge ethical issues."