Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-2c8nx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-20T20:05:51.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Memory and Optogenetic Intervention: Separating the Engram from the Ecphory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sarah K. Robins
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Optogenetics makes possible the control of neural activity with light. In this article, I explore how the development of this experimental tool has brought about methodological and theoretical advances in the neurobiological study of memory. I begin with Semon’s distinction between the engram and the ecphory, explaining how these concepts present a methodological challenge to investigating memory. Optogenetics provides a way to intervene into the engram without the ecphory that, in turn, opens up new means for testing theories of memory error. I focus on a series of experiments where optogenetics is used to study false memory and forgetting.

Type
Cognitive Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 1078 - 1089
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

Many thanks to John Bickle for organizing the PSA 2016 symposium Intervention and Progress: Optogenetics and Control over Neural Systems, where this article was originally presented. Thanks, too, for comments and feedback from the audience and my fellow symposium participants, Carl Craver and Jacqueline Sullivan.

References

Bickle, John. 2016. “Revolutions in Neuroscience: Tool Development.” Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. doi:10.3399/fnsys.2016.00024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colapinto, John. 2015. “Lighting the Brain: Karl Deisseroth and the Optogenetics Breakthrough.” New Yorker, May 18.Google Scholar
Craver, Carl F. Forthcoming. “Thinking about Interventions: Optogenetics and Makers Knowledge of the Brain.” In Causation in Biology and Philosophy, ed. C. Kenneth Waters. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
De Brigard, Felipe. 2014a. “Is Memory for Remembering? Recollection as a Form of Episodic Hypothetical Thinking.” Synthese 191:155–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Brigard, Felipe 2014b. “The Nature of Memory Traces.” Philosophy Compass 9:402–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deisseroth, Karl. 2011. “Optogenetics.” Nature Methods 8:26–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guru, Aakash, Post, Ryan J., Ho, Yi-Yun, and Warden, Melissa R.. 2015. “Making Sense of Optogenetics.” International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology 18:1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hasselmo, Michael E. 2012. How We Remember: Brain Mechanisms of Episodic Memory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Knight, Helen. 2015. “Researchers Find ‘Lost’ Memories.” MIT News, May 28.Google Scholar
Liu, Xu, Ramirez, Steve, Pang, P., Puryear, C., Govindarajan, A., Deisseroth, K., and Tonegawa, S.. 2012. “Optogenetic Stimulation of a Hippocampal Engram Activates Fear Memory Recall.” Nature 484:381–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGaugh, James L. 2000. “Memory: A Century of Consolidation.” Science 287:248–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michaelian, Kourken. 2016. Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramirez, Steve, Liu, Xu, Lin, Pei-Ann, Suh, Junghyup, Pignatelli, Michele, Redondo, Roger, Ryan, Tomás, and Tonegawa, Susumu. 2013. “Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus.” Science 341:388–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Redondo, Roger L., Kim, Joshua, Arons, Autumn, Ramirez, Steve, Liu, Xu, and Tonegawa, Susumu. 2014. “Bidirectional Switch of the Valence Associated with a Hippocampal Contextual Memory Engram.” Nature 513:426–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robins, Sarah K. 2016. “Optogenetics and the Mechanism of False Memory.” Synthese 193:1561–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robins, Sarah K. 2017. “Memory Traces.” In Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, ed. Bernecker, Sven and Michaelian, Kourken, 76–87. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, Tomás J., Roy, Dheeraj S., Pignatelli, Michele, Arons, Autumn, and Tonegawa, Susumu. 2015. “Engram Cells Retain Memory under Retrograde Amnesia.” Science 348:1007–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schacter, Daniel. 2001. Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory. Ann Arbor, MI: Sheridan.Google Scholar
Schacter, Daniel, Eich, J. E., and Tulving, Endel. 1978. “Richard Semon’s Theory of Memory.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 17:721–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Semon, R. 1921. The Mneme. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Theurer, Kari. 2013. “Compositional Explanatory Relations and Mechanistic Reduction.” Minds and Machines 23:287–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tulving, Endel, and Pearlstone, Zena. 1966. “Availability versus Accessibility of Information in Memory for Words.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5:381–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar