The Memory Hacker

Within four years, the team aims to wire a chip beneath the skulls of monkeys, whose brains are even closer to humans. Berger predicts that human trials of a prosthetic device that can actually replace impaired memory cells are less than 15 years away.

Unsurprisingly, Berger´s ambitions for the brain tend to court controversy. The misty realm of cognition, the part of us that receives and remembers knowledge, has long seemed impossible to reproduce in the lab. What makes humans unique, after all, is the fact that no two of us think alike-the result of individual patterns of associations, personal memories and thought processes that inherently defy machine-like standardization.

That´s why the notion of a â€bionic brain†puts off so many observers of Berger´s work. Tampering with fundamental processes like memory and consciousness could play havoc with notions of identity. For instance, what if a brain chip of the future caused people to recollect things that never happened to them? Or what if it destroyed healthy memories to make room for new ones? â€We could be screwing up good memories as well,†Granacki admits.

Walt O. Schalick, a physician and the associate director of the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values at Washington University in St. Louis, echoes that concern, asserting that a chip like Berger´s could fundamentally alter one´s identity. Changing the wiring of our memories, he warns, could subtly scramble our patterns of association and, by implication, the â€thought structure†that defines our individual personalities. This could happen, he argues, principally because even the best model of hippocampal cells doesn´t tell us everything about how the brain is working. â€Modeling or even mimicking is not replacing,†Schalick says. â€Dr. Berger´s experiments at this stage offer only an incomplete bridge.â€

He points to conceptions of how the heart worked in the early 20th century, when most people assumed it was nothing more than a pump. Then they discovered it was also an endocrine organ, and decades of work had to be done to adjust our grasp of its processes. â€Those who view this work as a step toward an uploadable brain-put in a new SD card with your Calculus 1 information, and take the test-are a long way off,†he says.

Another problem is that researchers have found that damage from diseases like Alzheimer´s occurs in many places in the brain. Fixing one broken slice of brain circuit, therefore, may not be enough. â€It´s important to remain skeptical,†Dartmouth´s Granger says. â€We may make something that looks like an arm, but it can´t pick up a cup of coffee.â€