My first thought is someone is going to do these experiments, probably on a prisoner. Then my second thought was death row prisoners being given the choice of a memory wipe or death as some sort of attempt at rehabilitation. I can't yet see half the ways this could go horribly for humanity.
On the other hand knowing how this works we might be able to boost the process and make people super fast learners, that could be really cool.
> My first thought is someone is going to do these experiments, probably on a prisoner.
In the animal model, they surgically altered the animals to have an injection cannula placed in their skulls, it's obviously hard to target, so you just install it and run the experiment, then after the experiment, you kill and necropsy the animal to see if it was in the right place after all. If it was you can keep those results, if it wasn't, you throw those results away.
Meanwhile the test is putting them on a rotating platform and shocking their feet on certain platform areas. Then waiting for them to avoid it habitually. Then you inject them. Then you see if they still avoid it.
These guys basically know next to nothing about how memories are formed at this point. Their test is so amazingly cruel while being particularly narrow that you can't actually divine anything useful from it. Except maybe more funding to keep shooting in the dark at these animals expense.
On the other hand knowing how this works we might be able to boost the process and make people super fast learners, that could be really cool.