Movie Gadget Friday: The Memory Erasing Process from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Last friday Josie Fraser checked out the Dejarik Holochess game from Star Wars, for this week's Movie Gadget Friday she writes about the Memory Erasing Process from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:
A lot of the action in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes place inside the head of main character Joel (played by Jim Carrey - thankfully not gurning for once), while he is having all memories relating to his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) erased by two techies. They work for a company called Lacuna, Inc., run by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak, who has perfected a painless, non-surgical procedure for identifying and erasing unwanted and painful memories.
In the film, the procedure is a two step process - first, the patient brings items relating to memories of the events or person they want expunging. Their head is placed in a large, white, donut shaped machine, which produces a display of cross-sections of their brain. They look at their meaningful objects, and while re-experience the unwanted memories Dr. Mierzwiak maps where the nasty thoughts are hiding out.
Next, the patient goes home, takes a sedative and is visited by the aforementioned technicians. Using a laptop, some software and a silver coloured space helmet, they then target and remove the neurons containing the memories. As Dr. Mierzwiak says, ?technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you?ll miss.?
Leaving aside the issue of entrusting your house, let alone your brain to random techies (in this movie, drunken knicker-stealing ones), let?s take a look at the technologies Lacuna Inc. procedure draws on.
The brain maps in the film look exactly like those generated by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain-scan. fMRI uses magnetic fields and radio signals that show up brain activity, since the exact location of brain functions (speech for example) aren?t uniform or accurately predictable enough to carry out brain surgery before knowing where the main action is taking place. However, in the movie memories are shown as specific and identifiable clusters, which helpfully show up on screen as red dots. Memories are actually diffuse, and they aren?t recalled by unique synaptic pathways. So don?t try taking out random cell clusters in the hope of forgetting that git who just dumped you for your mother/best friend/twin.
The technology nearest to the Lacuna memory wipe is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) - a highly controversial technology developed on the scientific premise that epileptic fits may cure depression, although nobody knows exactly why. Long and short term memory loss are regularly sited as common ?side effects? by patients undergoing ECT, although unfortunately for our love sick readers the actual memories lost aren?t selectable or predictable.
Your best bet currently is to dull your ability to feel in general, as this will then reduce the strength of any memories created in the first place, as well as your ability to experience the full pain of subsequent loss. Neurobiologist James McGaugh has demonstrated that the beta-blocker propepanol can help you with this. Popular alternatives include valium and good old alcoholism. The down-side being that dulling your senses in anticipation of an eventual heartbreak will almost certainly prevent anyone falling in love with you in the first place, since who wants to date a drugged up emotional zombie?
Keen movie goers will know a similar device is used in Woo?s disappointing Paycheck. The reason I?m looking at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and not Paycheck is that I?m still upset that Charlie Kaufman?s screenplay for A Scanner Darkly isn?t being used.
