Movie Taps Real Science of Mind Control
July 29, 2004 -- Resistance is futile — or so Hollywood might have you believe about the burgeoning world of neuroscience.
In an updated version of the 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate, evil-doers alter the memories of American veterans of the first Gulf War and then program them to kill on command years later.
For the original film, starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, the programmed victims were Korean War veterans, and hypnosis and brainwashing were the main tools of corruption. In the remake, starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, rogue scientists tap emerging brain science that has been tested or at least considered in recent years.
So how real is the possibility of mind control? It depends on how you define it, but scientists say current research comes close.
While a chip implant to change a person's memory hasn't surfaced, scientists have begun influencing memory using pharmaceuticals. And technology that has been tried extensively on animals can trigger the subjects to follow commands with the flick of a switch.
"These kind of innovations all have this feeling of being exciting, but also creepy," said Richard Glen Boire, founder of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, a nonprofit awareness group in Davis, Calif.
Enhancing and Repressing Memory
One study, for example, found nine healthy middle-aged pilots who took the Alzheimer's drug Aricept remembered flight-simulator lessons much better than nine others who took a placebo. Aricept has unwanted side effects, but researchers are working on other drugs that have been shown to promote long-term memory in animals.
Certain drugs known as beta blockers, meanwhile, have been shown to suppress emotional memory. Some feel this holds promise for people with post traumatic stress disorder who have trouble leaving behind wrenching events of their past.
