"I could take the oldest person here, make a little hole right here on the side of the head, and put some depth electrodes into their hippocampus and stimulate. And they would be able to recite back to you, verbatim, a book they read 60 years ago." So said Ben Carson, the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, yesterday. Carson is known for his unorthodox claims, such as his attempt to rewrite the Egyptology textbooks, but this time, as he's a former neurosurgeon himself, he might be thought to be on safer ground. Sadly not.
It is true that stimulation of various parts of the brain can evoke memories, or at least memory-like experiences. The hippocampus, however, is not known as a hotspot for this. Early studies found that hippocampal stimulation produces amnesia, not memory recall, and here's a recent paper reporting that patients couldn't even tell whether their ...
