12.04.42: BEING ABLE TO remember the exact order of the cards after
glancing through a pack only once is impressive, right?
Not if you are Dr Denver Pibram of the
Extropic Institute. He can remember them all effortlessly, providing he has his NeuroCon chip
turned on.
Many people now have cyberchips inserted in their brains, but what makes Pibram's prototype
special is its bandwidth - the quantity of information it can ferry in or out. He says: "Human
beings are so isolated because our minds are connected to others by the tenuous low-bandwidth links of
speech and hearing." Pibram's chip increases the number of neuronal signals by a factor of 1000. He
also plans to link it to a holographic reader.
"We know that memory works on a holographic principle," he says. "That means that by sampling a
small part of the output you can re-create the whole."
Memory-boosting is also available through Bliss Buster, based on cannabis. The reason cannabis
users had poor memory was that one of its ingredients mimicked the natural brain chemical anandamide
- a name derived from the Sanskrit for bliss - that stops memories from being created. Bliss
Buster blocks anandamide and reduces the rate of forgetting by 50%. JB
