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Sooner or later, someone in the world of marketing is going to be asked to launch and promote the world’s first memory pill. Should it be you, dear reader, hold back, for you will be at the brink of a great mischief.
Eric Kandel, the Dr Frankenstein whose monster is in the making, shakes his test tubes at Columbia University, New York. In the latest issue of New Scientist, he reveals that he and his team are developing a memory drug. The pill for forgetful people could be “just around the corner”.
His experiments on sea snails, flies and mice – well, he wouldn’t choose an elephant, would he? – show that to lay down long-term memories, certain parts of the brain must make certain memory proteins, and it is those he is artificially producing.
If I could remember his name – don’t tell me, it’s on the tip of my tongue – or where he worked, I would urge him to stop. It would, I know, be pointless to plead with him not to tamper with Nature – scientists are inveterate tamperers, that is what they are for – but it might just give him pause were he to stop tying knots in a sea snail’s handkerchief and imagine the implications for human happiness of what he is up to.
A moment’s thought reveals how intolerable life would become if we all had infallible long-term memories. For one of Nature’s greatest bounties is the ability to forget. It was different before the Fall of Man; in the Garden of Eden a perfect memory was OK since there was only perfection to remember. Original sin changed all that, and most of us can only face each new day because vast chunks of all those that preceded it are blotted out.
Can you imagine what it would be like to recall in glorious Technicolour every slight, every embarrassment, every blunder, every indignity, every failure, every hurt and every utterance of the Health Education Authority? Besides, a dodgy memory can be a positive source of pleasure. Blessed is the man who can’t remember, for to him every old joke is a new pleasure.
There are, too, the joys and consolations of selective memory, of which Geoffrey Boycott, is a leading exponent. To hear his hints on batting technique delivered from the lofty pinnacle of the commentary box you would think that in his prime the great man had been a kind of Yorkshire Ranjitsinhji, feathering the ball to the boundary with the supplest of wrists while the scoreboard ticked gleefully on. Those of us with different memories recall the Boycott who gave his name to a curry whose effect was summed up in the slogan “You still get the runs, but more slowly”.
Note that what the US scientists are working on is long-term memory, not short-term forgetfulness, which can be irritating. Most of us know what it’s like to be unable to recall phone numbers or names, or remember where one’s reading glasses were the last time they surfaced, or exactly what that simple calculation is that converts useless Celsius into meaningful Fahrenheit. A pill that helped with those things could be quite useful, but the best the scientists can offer are “simple devices” that rely on turning information into pictures.
For example, people’s names are easier to remember (or so it is said) if they can be turned into visual clues. Visualise a Smith as a blacksmith. Think of more complex names as combinations of images: a MacDonald, say, as a kilted duck.
The weakness of the theory, of course, is that if you have a rotten memory, it is as likely to fail with images as it is with numbers and names. “Well hello, what a pleasure it is to meet you again, Mr McDuck.”
Numbers, say the theorists, can be remembered in the same way, by hanging them on visual pegs. Rhyming helps for the numbers one to ten: bun, shoe, tree, door, hive, sticks, heaven, gate, line and hen. So to remember 4391, visualise a door in a tree, and through it a line leading into a cream bun.
Now imagine yourself standing at a cash dispenser, a tongue-clicking queue mounting behind you, as you juggle with your visual pegs trying to remember your PIN number. In and out of your whirring mind float images of gates, doors, bushes, hedges, conifers, ropes, threads, lines, doughnuts, cream slices, and black forest gateau. How long do you think it would take before the riot began in earnest?
The art of not remembering, or only partially remembering, is at the heart of Britain’s pub culture. A beer or two with friends would not be the same if everyone could instantly recall the name of that fat actor who used to be in the films with Humphrey Bogart, or the little man with baggy shorts and the twinkling feet who played in Danny Blanchflower’s Spurs side, or the big girl who used to work behind the bar at the Red Lion and ran off with the pork butcher with one eye. Amnesia is to the conversationalist what seasoning is to the cook. Indeed, the inability of drinkers to recall anything at all explains the phenomenal success of pub quiz nights.
My advice to Dr Wossname at Columbia University is, forget the whole thing.
