Real science vs. movie science
October 17th 2010 17:37
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They say you can never entirely delete information from a computer, and perhaps the same is true for the human brain. But what if you could? That's the premise behind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," the 2004 sci-fi fantasy starring Jim Carrey as a man who employs the services of a memory-extermination firm to erase all mental traces of his ex-girlfriend.
"That's a very interesting idea, sort of a sinister idea, right?" Dr. Catherine Woolley said when I rang her up last week. "When we get into movies or stories that involve changing people's minds, I think that becomes very personal and therefore very interesting."
Woolley is a professor in the neurobiology and physiology department at Northwestern University, and her area of expertise is brain plasticity — in other words, the brain's capacity for change, and specifically as it relates to memory. She is among the panel of Northwestern scientists who will be debating the plausibility of movie science versus real science Wednesday at what is sure to be a lively discussion dubbed "Mutants, Androids and Cyborgs: The Science of Pop Culture Films," presented as part of WBEZ's Off-Air Event Series.
So, how fantastical is this idea of voluntary amnesia?
According to Woolley, "It's not necessarily possible to wipe memories, but there has been progress toward doing that kind of thing."
Wait. Really?
"A few years ago, it was discovered that, in fact, when you re-evoke a memory, you sort of reopen the window of vulnerability to change that memory. The idea is that if you could interfere with that process" — through the use of a drug administered at the moment a memory is being recalled — "you could, in an extreme, wipe out that memory, or at least lessen it."
Woolley said researchers are "interested in trying to use this to help those with post-traumatic stress disorder. But when you take a drug, the problem is that there's no way to really selectively target only the very few cells that represent a particular memory. So the risk is that you would inadvertently disrupt other memories or other brain functions."
Great, you wipe out a bad memory and a few essential memories along with it. And you think you have a tough time now remembering all your passwords.
Other movies up for discussion Wednesday include "Gattaca" (1997), "The Matrix" (1999), "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), and "Minority Report" (2002), the latter of which will be pondered by Dr. Malcolm MacIver, who specializes in biologically inspired robotics.
"There's this one section in there with these robot spiders," he said last week. In the movie, the spiders are dispatched throughout an apartment building to seek out Tom Cruise's character.
"That's a biologically inspired robot. What animals can teach us is, how can you take in tons of sensory information and move in this highly agile way through space? This is what the robotic spiders are doing. They're collecting information — yes, it's for police monitoring — but it's agile movement and it's collecting information, and I think it's representative of what biologically inspired robotics can offer us."
One of MacIver's current projects has a far more benign use. He has built a robot fish that could conceivably monitor a coral reef. "There are lots of problems with coral reefs around the world, and having a human monitor them is very expensive."
All the same, any kind of monitoring makes most of us a little uncomfortable. "There's hardly ever anything in science that's always good or always bad," Woolley said. Until technology catches up with our fantasies, we'll have to leave it to the movies to explore the moral implications.
The event is 7 p.m. Wednesday at Northwestern's Technological Institute. Tickets are $15. For more info, go to wbez.org/events.
Environmental detective
"Living Downstream," the documentary based on the book by ecologist and Illinois native Sandra Steingraber, comes to the Museum of Contemporary Art at 7 p.m. Tuesday. The Washington Post calls the film "handsomely photographed and powerfully argued" in its depiction of Steingraber, who has written extensively on the link between our physical health and the environment. For more info, go to livingdownstream.com.
Eat local
A cinematic cousin to "Food Inc.," the documentary "Fresh" delves into the local food debate. The film screens at 1:30 p.m. Sunday as part of the Chicago History Museum's monthlong Food Revolution series. For more info, go to chicagohs.org and click on "Upcoming Events."
Rock 'n' roll and social activism
The Decibelle Music and Culture Festival comes to Chicago Filmmakers on Friday with a program that includes the short films "Two of Hearts" (a "spinning kaleidoscope of skin and hair" that is an homage to early music videos, Kate Bush and ABBA) and "It's hard to wreck a nice beach/It's hard to recognize speech" (a "cultural study told through the filmmaker's sometimes funny, sometimes painful memories of growing up with a speech impediment").
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