Memories Implanted in Mice. Are You next?

[From article]
Sleeping minds: prepare to be hacked. For the first time, conscious memories have been implanted into the minds of mice while they sleep. The same technique could one day be used to alter memories in people who have undergone traumatic events.
When we sleep, our brain replays the day's activities. The pattern of brain activity exhibited by mice when they explore a new area during the day, for example, will reappear, speeded up, while the animal sleeps. This is thought to be the brain practising an activity - an essential part of learning. People who miss out on sleep do not learn as well as those who get a good night's rest, and when the replay process is disrupted in mice, so too is their ability to remember what they learned the previous day.
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Loren Frank at the University of California, San Francisco, agrees. "I think this is a really important step towards helping people with memory impairments or depression," he says. "It is surprising to me how many neurological and psychiatric illnesses have something to do with memory, including schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27115-new-memories-implanted-in-mice-while-they-sleep.html#.VP3dWl1NJhF

New memories implanted in mice while they sleep
16:53 09 March 2015
by Jessica Hamzelou
Journal reference: Nature Neuroscience, doi:10.1038/nn.3970