Butterfly Girl

Okay, I was watching some DVDs of an old Star Trek season this week. In general, because of my university education in research, there are certain things that aren’t striking me as plausible anymore (whereas when I was a kid I was in awe of all the pseudo-scientific stuff). Also, we’ve advanced in technology enough even in the last 10 years or so that some of the stuff seems outdated (even though its supposedly set in time ahead of us).But this one episode just cracked me up. A doctor was advising Picard as to the feasibility of erasing a young child’s memory of her trip to the Enterprise. She made the statement that “memories are stored chemically on the neurons of the cerebral cortex.”

Now how does that strike you?  Scientific?  Plausible? Does it not seem like she is identifying a particular region of the brain responsible for memory that could then be located and altered?

Well, I’m currently finishing up my degree in Psychology so I actually know what she’s talking about and because I do, the statement is just totally laughable. In fact I had to pause the movie I was chuckling so hard. The entire main section of your brain is called the cerebral cortex. Everything from memory, to hearing, to vision, to motor control, to sensation, to decision making, etc. is stored there. And your brain is made up entirely of neurons. So what she is saying is like telling a friend that your house is located on earth. Duh!

I’m sorry…I know the majority of people out there won’t get the humor in this…but it absolutely cracked me up!