BIOLOGY INVESTIGATORY

PROJECT

NAME:- S.THANIYA PRATYAINI

CLASS:-XII ‘A2’
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that S. Thaniya Pratyaini of

class 12 ‘A2‘ has completed her
investigatory project entitled “STUDY ON
ASCORBIC ACID AND ITS CONTENT IN
CITRUS FRUITS” in biology during the
academic year 2022-23 for the partial
fulfillment of her academic course. The
subject matter present in the project is
original and bonafide in nature.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to sincerely and profusely thank my

biology teacher UDAYA CHITRA for her
guidance and vital support in completing my
project.

I would also like to extend my gratitude to our

lab assistant for providing me with all the
facility that was required.
 INDEX

S.NO TOPIC PAGE.NO

1 Introduction 6
2 Theory 7
3 Determination 13
of vitamin C by
iodine titration
4 Experiment 14
5 Bibliography 17
 TOPIC

Erasing and implanting

human memory
 INTRODUCTION
Memory refers to the psychological
processes of acquiring, storing,
retaining, and later retrieving
information. There are three major
processes involved in memory:
encoding, storage, and retrieval. It
involves the ability to both preserve
and recover information. However, this
is not a flawless process. Sometimes
people forget or misremember things. Other times,
information is not properly encoded in memory in the first
place.
Memory problems are
often relatively minor
annoyances, like
forgetting birthdays.
However, they can also
be a sign of serious
conditions such
as Alzheimer's
disease and other kinds
of dementia. These
conditions affect quality
of life and ability to
function.
There are three main types of memories: sensory
memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

TYPES OF MEMORY
There are many theories about the types of memory within
the human brain. Most
scientists believe there
are at least four general
types of memory:

 working memory
 sensory memory
 short-term memory
 long-term memory

Some researchers suggest these are not distinct types of

memory, but rather stages of memory. In this view,
memory begins in sensory memory, transitions to short-
term memory, and then may move to long-term memory. A
memory a person uses only for a brief time, such as a
word they use at the beginning of a sentence, is a part of
working memory and may never move to another part of
memory.

Sensory memory:-
Sensory memory holds sensory information for very brief
periods of time, usually one second or less . The
processing of memories and other information begins in
this type of memory. If a person pays attention to sensory
input, then the information may move into short-term and
then long-term memory.

Some examples of sensory memory include:

 registering the sounds a person encounters on a walk

 briefly acknowledging something in a person’s field of
vision

Short-term memory:-
Short-term memory allows a person to recall a limited
string of information for a short period. These memories
disappear quickly, after 30 seconds. Short-term memory
is not just memory that does not last long. Instead, it is a
type of short-lived storage that can only hold a few pieces
of information.

Some examples of short-term memory include:

 remembering a string of 5–7 words and repeating it

back
 remembering a phone number while getting a pen to
jot it down

Working memory:-
Working memory is similar to short-term memory.
However, unlike the latter, working memory is where a
person manipulates information. This helps them
remember details of their current task. Some
behaviours that use working memory include:

 solving a complex math problem where a person

must remember several numbers
 baking something, which requires a person to recall
the ingredients they already added
 participating in a debate, during which a person must
remember the main arguments and the evidence each
side uses.

While researchers typically separate working and short-

term memory into two different categories, some often
finds a significant overlap between the two.

Long-term memory :-
Long-term memory stores a wide range of memories and
experiences.Most memories that people recall, especially
those older than about 30 seconds, are part of long-term
memory. Many researchers divide long-term memory into
two subcategories:- implicit and explicit.

1. Explicit long-term memory

Explicit memories are conscious memories of events,
autobiographical facts, or things a person learns.
Some types of explicit long-term memory include the
following.

 Episodic memory

These are memories of events or autobiographical facts.

Examples of episodic memory include remembering an
election, events from childhood, and personal facts, such
as if someone is married.

 Semantic memory

Semantic memories are general knowledge about the

world. A person may remember a fact or event that they
did not experience because they learned or studied it.

2.Implicit long-term memory

Implicit memories are memories that influence a person’s
behavior. However, people do not consciously think about
them.

Some types of this memory include the following.

 Procedural memory

Procedural memory helps a person perform familiar tasks,

such as walking or driving.

At first, they might have to learn to do these things and

remember specific skills, but eventually, these tasks
become an automatic part of procedural memory.
  Priming

Priming occurs when past experiences influences a

person’s behavior.

For example, a smoker might crave a cigarette after a

meal, or an experimenter might train a person to press a
button in response to a photo.

How Memory Works ?

The term “engram” is used to describe where memory is
stored. There are many engrams in different regions of the
brain, each is used for a different purpose. For instance,
the amygdala is responsible for fear memories and the
interpositus nucleus is responsible for conditioned
stimulus.

Through experiments in mice, researchers discovered that

neurons associated with memory can be boosted with a
protein called CREB, and memories can be erased with a
protein called alpha-CaM kinase II. Also, those neurons
can be activated to form false memory.

Remembering:-
For short term memories, a protein called Kinase A is
produced. However, sometimes, Kinase A is produced in
such abundance that it causes MAPK, an another protein,
to be produced. In return , MAPK causes a protein called
CREB to be produced. It is essential for forming long-term
memories.

Forgetting:-
Evolution of human beings allows people to forget things
because the quality of life rests with the selective erasure
of memory. Recent research suggests that fear memories
can be near instantly erased and that specific proteins
have significant powers to abolish them. This happens
through production of a protein called alpha-CaM kinase II.
Scientists have found that this protein can be used for
selective deletion of fear memories in mice.

False Memory:-
People are found to have false memory too. For example,
in many court cases, defendants were found guilty based
on testimony from witnesses who were sure of their
recollections, but DNA evidence proved otherwise.
Researchers in MIT found that by reactivating neurons
associated with a particular memory, false memory could
be planted into the brains of mice.

MEMORY ERASURE
Memory erasure is the selective artificial removal of
memories or associations from the mind. It has been
shown to be possible in some experimental conditions;
some of the techniques currently being investigated are:
drug-induced amnesia, selective memory suppression,
destruction of neurons, interruption of memory,
reconsolidation, and the disruption of specific molecular
mechanisms.

Methods:-
 Drug induced amnesia:-
Drug-induced amnesia is impairment or loss of memory
due to drug use. Amnesia can be used as a treatment for
patients who have experienced psychological trauma or
for medical procedures where full anesthesia is not an
option.

Drug-induced memory loss is typically anterograde, the

inability to create new memories for a period of time
beginning soon after drug introduction. Memory loss
effects are generally transient and limited to short-term
memory. Patients usually do not suffer from sustained
impairment, and baseline memory function returns upon
discontinuation of the drug. However, the amnesia from
the period immediately after drug introduction may remain
permanently. Rarely, some drugs may be able to induce
retrograde memory loss, the inability to recall memories
created prior to drug introduction. General anesthesia,
benzodiazepines, or sedatives can result in periods of
amnesia. It is an intentional therapeutic component
during surgery or other procedures requiring sedation.
Substances of abuse, such as alcohol or marijuana, can
also result in amnesia. Amnesic drug effects are
potentiated by alcohol.

 Disruption of molecular mechanisms

There is a growing amount of information that has shown
that memory depends largely on the brain's synaptic
plasticity, with a large part of this being dependent on its
ability to maintain long-term potentiation (LTP).Studies on
LTP have also started to indicate that there are several
molecular mechanisms that may be at the basis of
memory storage. A more recent approach to erasing
memories and the associations the brain makes with
objects is disrupting specific molecular mechanisms in
the brain that are actively keeping memories active.

Recovering methamphetamine (METH) addicts have

reported that the sight of certain objects such as a lighter,
gum or drug paraphernalia can cause massive cravings
that can sometimes lead to a break in their mental
strength and cause them to relapse. This indicates that
long-term memories can be called upon by various
different associations that were made with the memory
without the conscious effort of the person. With an
increasing belief that memories are largely supported by
functional and structural plasticity deriving from F-actin
polymerization in postsynaptic dendritic spines at
excitatory synapses. Recent research has been done to
target this F-actin polymerization by using direct actin
depolymerization or a myosin II inhibitor to disrupt the
polymerized F-actin associated with METH memory
associations. The study indicated types of associations
can be disrupted days to weeks after consolidation.
Although the depolymerization techniques had no effect
on food reward based associations or shock based
associations the results demonstrate the idea that meth
associated memories' actin cytoskeleton is constantly
changing making it uniquely sensitive to depolymerization
during the maintenance phase. This is some of the first
evidence showing that memories made with different
associations are actively maintained using different
molecular substrates. These results also show that the
actin cytoskeleton may be a promising target for selective
disruption of unwanted long-term memories.

 Selective memory suppression

Selective memory suppression is the idea that someone
can consciously block an unwanted memory. There are
many different therapeutic techniques or training that has
been done to test this idea with some success. Many of
these techniques focus on blocking the retrieval of a
memory using different suppression techniques to slowly
teach the brain to suppress the memory. Although some
of these techniques have been useful for some people it
has not been shown to be a clear cut solution to forgetting
memories. Because these memories are not truly erased
but merely suppressed the question of how permanent the
solution is and what actually happens to the memories
can be troubling for some.

Selective memory suppression is also something that can

occur without a person being consciously aware of
suppressing the creation and retrieval of unwanted
memories. When this occurs without the person knowing
it is usually referred to as memory inhibition; the memory
itself is called a repressed memory.

 Destruction of neurons
With evidence showing that different memories excite
different neurons or system of neurons in the brain the
technique of destroying select neurons in the brain to
erase specific memories is also being researched. Studies
have started to investigate the possibility of using distinct
toxins along with biotechnology that allows the
researchers to see which areas of the brain are being used
during the reward learning process of making a memory to
destroy target neurons. In a paper published in 2009,
authors showed that neurons in the lateral amygdala that
had a higher level of cyclic adenosine monophosphate
response element-binding protein (CREB) were activated
primarily over other neurons by fear memory expression.
This indicated to them that these neurons were directly
involved in the making of the memory trace for that fear
memory. They then proceeded to train mice using auditory
fear training to produce a fear memory. They proceeded to
check which of the neurons were overexpressing CREB
and then, using an inducible diphtheria-toxin strategy, they
destroyed those neurons, resulting in persistent and
strong memory erasure of the fear memory.

Researchers have also found that the levels of the

neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, can also effect which
memories are most prominent in our minds.

Due to the lack of understanding of the brain this

technique of destroying neurons may have a much larger
effect on the patient than just the removal of the intended
memories. Due to this complex nature of the brain
treatment that would stun the neurons instead of
destroying them could be another approach that could be
taken.

 Optogenetics :-
Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the
activity of neurons or other cell types with light. It helps in
recovering and erasing memory . It also helps in
implanting false memories. The process starts with
identification of the neurons associated with a particular
engram that is responsible for a specific piece of memory.
Then, light sensitive opsins are inserted into the engram,
turning the neurons in that area light sensitive. After that,
fiber optics or micro LEDs are implanted to target the light
sensitive neurons. The light is controlled by a microchip to
turn on or off those neurons to manipulate memory.For
forgetting a specific memory, the light is activated to
control the neurons that release certain chemicals, such
as alpha-CaM kinase II, that erase memories. Alternatively,
the light can also be used to deactivate neurons
responsible for memory storage, preventing the memory
from being recalled.

Potential patients:-
There are several different types of possible patients that
have the potential to draw great benefit from the selective
memory erasure; these include people with drug addiction,
or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD patients
may include war veterans, people who witnessed horrific
events, victims of violent crimes and many other possibly
traumatic events. These potential patients have unwanted
memories that can be absolutely devastating to their daily
lives and cause them to not be able to function properly.
Along with patients experiencing those severe
circumstances, the idea of selective memory erasure is an
attractive idea for many people. Making the practical use
of this technology something that could be used by many
people.

MORE ABOUT PTSD

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric
disorder that may occur in people who have experienced
or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster,
a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or rape or
who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or
serious injury.
Symptoms of PTSD may include re-living the event,
avoidance of things that remind you of the traumatic event,
negative changes toward beliefs and attitudes, and feeling
keyed up.

Currently, the main treatments for PTSD are to visit a

psychologist or counselor to help the brain “get over” the
event, or to go to a psychiatrist to take some medication
to help alleviate the stress. There are many other therapies
such as art therapy to relieve stress indirectly.

Causes :-
Studying parts of the brain involved in dealing with fear
and stress helps researchers to better understand
possible causes of PTSD. One such brain structure is the
amygdala, known for its role in emotion, learning, and
memory. The amygdala appears to be active in fear
acquisition, or learning to fear an event (such as touching
a hot stove), as well as in the early stages of fear
extinction, or learning not to fear. Another such brain
structure is the hippocampus. The hippocampus is
important for forming memories, but in people with PTSD,
the hippocampus has a significantly lower volume.

Stathmin is necessary for the creation of fear memories.

Some people have more stathmin in the brain than others,
and thus are more prone to PTSD. GRP is another
signaling chemical in the brain released during emotional
events. A lack of GRP may result in less capability to cope
with the traumatic event. Serotonin also plays a role in the
happiness of the person. If serotonin levels are low, then
the person is more likely to develop PTSD.

Storing fear extinction memories and dampening the

original fear response appears to involve the prefrontal
cortex area of the brain, involved in tasks such as decision
-making, problem-solving, and judgment. Certain areas of
the prefrontal cortex play slightly different roles.

MEMORY IMPLANTATION
Our minds can make memories out of stories we’ve heard,
or photographs we’ve seen, even when the actual
recollections are long forgotten. And, new research
suggests, this can happen even when the stories aren’t
true. This is only possible through memory implantation.

Memory implantation is a technique used in cognitive

psychology to investigate human memory. In memory
implantation studies researchers make people believe that
they remember an event that actually never happened. The
false memories that have been successfully implanted in
people's memories include remembering being lost in a
mall as a child, taking a hot air balloon ride, and putting
slime in a teacher's desk in primary school.

Memory implantation techniques were developed in the

1990s as a way of providing evidence of how easy it is to
distort people's memories of past events.

Methods:-
The methods used in memory implantation studies are
meant to mimic those used by some therapists
to recover repressed memories of childhood events. The
high rate of people "remembering" false events shows that
memories cannot always be taken at face value. Being
told to go home and look at old photos to jog your
memory can help you remember real events, but paired
with suggestions from a therapist it might also lead to
false memories.
Memory implantation studies are also similar to recovered
memory therapy in the way that they involve an
authoritative figure claiming to know that the event
actually happened and applying pressure on the
participant/patient to remember.
Memory implantation techniques in general also illustrate
how people can relatively easily come to remember things
that actually never happened. This poses a big problem for
criminal confessions resulting from suggestive
questioning by police and others and also for the accuracy
associated with eyewitness memory. Opotogenetics can
also be used to implant false memory as mentioned in the
previous section.
It has been argued that memory implantation studies are
not applicable to real life memories of trauma such as
childhood sexual abuse. As it is not ethical to try to
implant false memories of sexual abuse researchers have
tried to get around this by choosing other events that are
seen as negative but not traumatic. Being lost in a
shopping mall for example would be a negative experience
for most children. Hyman and colleagues used memory
implantation techniques with emotional events such as a
specific birthday party (positive) and being hospitalized
overnight (negative). They found that using emotional
events did not change the rate of false memory creation
significantly compared with other studies.

Published studies:-
Other studies have expanded on this paradigm by
introducing photos instead of narratives. Wade and
colleagues found that 50% of people came to remember
details of a hot air balloon ride that never happened, after
seeing a manipulated photo depicting the event. Later it
has been argued that photos by themselves do not
produce more false memories than narratives, but that
both methods have the power to successfully implant
false memories. Real photos have also been found to
increase the creation of false memories. In a study by
Lindsay and colleagues people were shown a childhood
photo from the same time period as the false event.
Seeing the photo resulted in more false memories, even
when the photos did not depict the actual event.

In a study with children 1999 Pezdek and Hodge found

that it was easier to implant a memory of a plausible event
(being lost in a mall) than an implausible one (receiving a
rectal enema). Later follow up studies, however, show that
the perceived plausibility of a false event can be changed,
making the false event easier to implant. Taken together,
these findings show that there are many factors that are
important for the way people remember events.

Mazzoni also suggest a model for the development of

false memories through suggestions which model
includes 3 processes. The first process is to make people
perceive the event as plausible, the second is to make
people believe it is likely to have happened to them and
the third step is to help people interpret thoughts and
fantasies about the event as memories. Other factors
influencing the likelihood of producing false memories
include imagining the events and making a source-
monitoring error, specifically reality monitoring.

Legal case:-
A real life example of memory implantation occurred
during the criminal case against Paul Ingram. Ingram was
accused by his daughters of recurring sexual abuse in
their childhood. Ingram denied all allegations at first but
after being interviewed by police and therapists he came
to remember multiple instances of abuse.

Sociologist Richard Ofshe considered this confession a

result of suggestive questioning and decided to test his
theory. He told Ingram about a made-up scenario and said
it was another accusation made by his children. Ofshe
 asked Ingram to try and remember as much as possible
about this new event. Ingram could not recall anything
straight away but after thinking about it for some time
came up with a written confession where he described in
detail what had happened. His children confirmed to Ofshe
that the event had never actually happened; Ingram had
created an entirely false memory of an event after
suggestions from Ofshe. Ofshe considered this
successful memory implantation evidence of Paul
Ingram's suggestibility and in his opinion it questions the
accuracy of Ingram's other confessions.

Memory Modification with

the Use of Optogenetics

Implantation of “False
Memories”/Modification of Memory
Details:-
As already mentioned, memory-modifying research is one
area which can provide a glimpse of the capabilities of
optogenetics. The first optogenetic study to gain
widespread publicity was a study by Ramirez , in which
authors attempted to implant a false memory in a mouse
by means of contextual fear conditioning. To this end, they
tagged neurons of memory-engram regions of the
hippocampus that were active when the mouse was
placed in one chamber (chamber A), and then activated
them with light when the mouse was placed in a different
chamber (chamber B), in which it was given mild electric
shocks. This procedure produced an association between
the memory of the previously neutral chamber A and the
aversive stimulation received in chamber B, which, when
the mouse was reintroduced into chamber A, generated a
fear response (despite the absence of any further light
stimulation). To confirm that researchers did not create a
generalized fearful memory , the mouse was placed in a
completely new chamber, C, where it displayed no fear
response, instead freely exploring the new environment.
Although false memories had previously been planted
using relatively simple misinformation techniques, i.e.,
providing misleading information about a past event either
to distort the recollection of certain details of an existing
memory or to implant a new, completely fabricated
memory, this became the first study to implant a “false
memory” by manipulating the brain activity of a non-
speaking subject . This optogenetic procedure also has
the unique advantage of not relying on human-derived
factors that might moderate the rate of success in
implanting false memories.

Recovery of “Lost” Memories:-

Another impressive demonstration of the potential of
optogenetics was provided by research on the recovery of
“lost” memories. Autobiographical memories formed in
early infancy in both humans and animals (including mice)
are rapidly forgotten, a phenomenon known as childhood
or infantile amnesia . Until recently, it was unknown
whether such memories were permanently erased, e.g.,
due to storage failure, or became increasingly inaccessible
with time, e.g., due to retrieval failure. Initial resolution of
this question was provided by Guskjolen . In this study,
infant mice were subjected to contextual fear conditioning,
creating a memory of having received an electric shock in
a particular chamber. Although such memories normally
decay with time due to infantile amnesia, Guskjolen
managed to retrieve these “lost” infant memories by first
targeting the hippocampal neurons , which are responsible
for their original encoding during infancy and then
reactivating them 3 months later when the mouse reached
adulthood. This finding demonstrated for the first time
that infant memories are probably not permanently erased,
but rather become inaccessible with time due to retrieval
failure

Erasure and Recovery of Selected

Memories on Demand:-
Some evidence indicates that optogenetics can also erase
and recover selected memories on demand . This
extraordinary possibility was demonstrated by Nabavi ,
who was able to repeatedly deactivate and reactivate a
specific memory by modifying its synaptic strength.
Remarkably, another line of research demonstrated that it
may be possible to reversibly deactivate and reactivate not
only relatively new but even very remote, well-consolidated
memories with the use of optogenetics. This was
achieved by first training a group of mice to associate an
auditory cue with an electric shock (which resulted in the
acquisition of an auditory-cued fear memory), and then
exposing them to the cue 4 weeks later while inhibiting
CA1 hippocampal neurons, which abolished recall of the
remote fear memory. Importantly, this interference was
shown to be temporary (i.e., reversible): when mice were
re-tested on the next day without optogenetic intervention,
the fear memory was still present and mice expressed the
freezing response to the shock-predicting auditory cue.
Heretofore, no other method has yet been able to switch
selected memories on and off “at will.” Although the
erasure of memories has been previously achieved using
amnestic agents, which, administered after learning, can
prevent the consolidation of newly-acquired memories,
these compounds were shown not only to act non-
selectively i.e., impairing memory of all recently encoded
events and producing a form of general retrograde
amnesia but also to be toxic for humans, which precludes
their (clinical) use .
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_implantation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_erasure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optogenetics

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11569-020-00377-1

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/human-
memory#:~:text=Human%20memory%20is%20a%20powerful,memory%20and%20long%2Dterm
%20memory.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/types-of-memory#long-term-memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory
https://www.1000sciencefairprojects.com/Biology/erasing-and-implanting-human-memory.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug-induced_amnesia