What if You Could Record All of Your Memories?
In the grand scheme of things, we each have two important guides to a better future: our accumulated experiences and our memories. So would you wear a device that recorded yours?
There’s an innovation in the works that can help us sort through all of our experiences in a day and hone in on what really matters to us.
Just how many small, joyful moments are we forgetting about in this world that moves so quickly? And how could a device that stores our memories and emotions help us make more informed decisions about our lives? Or improve the quality of it for individuals who struggle with memory loss and retainment?
Let’s meet the person behind this piece of technology to learn about all of the new possibilities artificial intelligence can bring into each our lives.
Source: Courtesy of Neo Mohsenvand
“Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them”
—Bob Dylan
Imagine having the ability to go back in time and see all of those little moments that made your heart race. Those perfect nights with your friends, the little smile your partner gave you the first time you saw each other, that feeling of pride when you knocked a big presentation out of the park or the nervous excitement that filled you when you brought your baby home for the first time.
How would that change the stories we tell ourselves, and improve our decisions about what really matters?
Or, imagine, the heartbreak of memory loss. Not being able to simply recall if you ate breakfast or know that the oddly familiar person standing in front of you is actually your daughter; that you love chocolate donuts, or your favorite color is yellow.
We don’t have any way to reverse the effects of or prevent dementia and Alzheimers. We attempt to jog our loved one’s memories with our pleas and reminders of who they are—of who we are—and while we only want to be there and support them, this situation usually ends up exhausting and frustrating for everyone.
So what if we had memory aids that could record our memories and emotions and play them back?
What could we learn about our lives? How could our quality of life change?
After caring for his own loved one with memory loss, Neo Mohsenvand, a Ph.D. student at MIT Media Lab, has been diligently testing the innovation he’s come up with to create an artificial memory bank: Mnemo. By studying the neuroscience and psychology behind memory and tracking his brainwaves and biosignals, he’s been able to not only better understand cognitive decline but himself, and his own life, as well.
Neo gives us a look at what this wearable technology brings to the table, how he’s been using it, what he’s learned about our brains and how we can better take control of our lives in this video from the great channel, Quartz!
How cool is that? If you’d like to see more from Quartz, check out their entire YouTube channel! You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date.
