Great Podcast about Memory

Got to talking last night to a fellow player in one of my favorite games.  Turns out that he's finishing his PhD in Neuroscience.  We pretty much nerded everyone else out of the chatroom discussing things like how children recover from brain trauma and such.

Anyway, he shared the following link with me: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Rat

Great podcast.  It explains the process of memory in a way laymen can grasp, while adding a few really mind-blowing discoveries that have happened in the past decade.  Of course, if you've been keeping up on the field, you probably already know it.  But if you haven't really been keeping up in the past 8 years, there will be at least one but you've might have missed out on.

You don't have time for a 22 minute podcast?  Here are the main points:

• Memories are stored in proteins.
• Certain drugs can stop those proteins from forming during the process of memory-making.
• When we remember events, we are actually reliving them, which causes them to be altered every time we remember them.
• The less you call up a memory, the more accurate it is.
• If we are given one of those drugs at the time we are remembering the memory, we lose that memory and only that memory.
• Inactive memories are not affected by these drugs.

These discoveries are already being used in different ways to help PTSD sufferers.