Memory loss breakthrough: New implant can reverse Alzheimer’s damage
By ANIL DAWAR
GETTY
Scientists have developed an electronic implant to help brains damaged by Alzheimer’s retain memories.
They hope it will be used to take over certain areas of diseased brains to help “translate” a short-term memory into a permanent one.
The project is funded by the US military as a way of helping injured soldiers overcome memory loss.
But researchers say the astonishing technology could also help to treat brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer’s causes the brain to degenerate and the damage interferes with the formation of new long-term memories while old ones survive.
The new US technology has already been tested on nine people with epilepsy who had electrodes implanted in their brains to treat chronic seizures.
Researchers read the electrical signals created in the patients’ brains as they conducted simple tasks.
The results were then used to create a computer program which could predict with 90 per cent accuracy how the signals would be translated.