Short-Term Memory In Theodore Berger's Black Mirror

Think about an implantable device on your head that helps you better recall everything. Well, that sounds a lot like a device showed in an episode of Black Mirror, but in reality someone is actually working on a not that perfect but similar device. Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer at the University of Southern California is working on memory enhancement in a form of prosthesis, surgically implanted directly into the brain.
The prosthesis can act like an artificial hippocampus by electrically simulating the brain in a specific way to build memories. Its aim is to convert short-term-memory into long-term-memory and just like hippocampus, to store it.
Berger’s experiment started by teaching a rabbit to engage an audio tone with air puffed
into the rabbit’s face, making it to blink. Berger could observe patterns of activity firing off in the rabbit’s hippocampus with the help of electrodes attached to it. He refers this firing pattern as a space-time code, describing where the neurons are in the brain and when they fire.
The memory, which the rest of the brain uses as a signal to make the rabbit blink, is represented by the outgoing code.
Berger claims he could mathematically model the general rule, which the hippocampus uses to transform short-term-memories into long-term-memories.
He then built an artificial rat hippocampus, an experimental prosthesis, with the general rule in hand. He taught the rats with electrodes monitoring their hippocampuses to press a lever, and was able to obtain the corresponding space-time codes. He then ran the code through his mathematical model and sent it back to the rats’ brain. And, you know what? The rats successfully pressed their levers, validating Berger’s system.
He also tried out the prosthesis in rhesus monkeys, which successfully improved its memory.
And, now, it’s time to implant it on human. But, could this similar implant really work on human brain?However, being optimistic, Berger told IEEE Spectrum Syncing up with Kernel, Berger is planning to market the implant as a medical device, which can be helpful to the memory impaired. With a version of this implant, he is currently conducting a human trial, and so far his patients are responding well on memory test. This could be a revolutionary device to help people suffering from Alzheimer, as well as to enhance human intelligence in areas such as creativity, attention, and
focus.