Doctor Who at 60: The Doctor’s skills extend to wiping people\u2019s memories. But does that ring a bell with real-world research? <\/p>
It has been 15 years since Catherine Tate\u2019s fan-favourite Donna Noble left Doctor Who<\/em>. Perhaps you remember it like it was only yesterday, which is something that can\u2019t be said for Donna herself. David Tennant\u2019s Doctor was forced to erase her memories of their time together, lest her puny human brain burn out from too much Time Lord knowledge. You may be shocked to hear, however, that there are doubts over Doctor Who<\/em>\u2019s scientific rigour.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cWe don\u2019t know the ultimate capacity for human memory<\/a>,\u201d says neuroscientist Dr Dean Burnett<\/a>, author of Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion<\/em>. <\/p> \u201cNo one\u2019s lived long enough to fill it, for a start. If you did replicate the human senses in a computer and stored everything that you got from a live feed, it would fill up a hard drive pretty quickly. But that\u2019s not how memories work. We don\u2019t remember every single element of every experience we have of every waking moment. Our brains are a lot more discrete.\u201d<\/p> Nevertheless, the idea of wiping someone\u2019s memory isn\u2019t entirely implausible, points out Burnett.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cI think if you ran a powerful enough electric current through the main storage regions of the brain, then that would scramble things,\u201d he says. \u201cHow you would do that safely \u2013 to the point where you don\u2019t lose vital memories, or the ability to remember new things \u2013 is another matter though.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> The idea that you can eliminate specific memories \u2013 \u00e0 la<\/em> the Doctor \u2013 is a far more fantastical concept, however.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cWe can\u2019t look at someone\u2019s brain and say, \u2018Okay, here\u2019s a memory of when they got their first bike\u2019,\u201d says Burnett. <\/p> \u201cThe best we could do is to look at someone\u2019s brain in a scanner to see what parts are activated when they think of that bike. And even then it\u2019s tricky because your frontal lobe, which is retrieving the memory, will be active, but there\u2019ll be lots of different parts of the brain being triggered simultaneously too. <\/p> “In one part may be the memory for \u2018bike\u2019, and in another part is \u2018childhood, 1987\u2019. The memory is not in one location. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so difficult.\u201d<\/p>