There are several mysteries about our own bodies that we haven’t been able to solve yet and that is something I find weirdly ironic. I mean, not knowing about what you are made of is a huge limitation that nature has placed on us.

Things like dreaming, consciousness, presence of different blood types, purpose of fingerprints and some small organs in the body and various other phenomena are still not understood by us fully.

Thankfully scientists are constantly trying to make sense of all the inner (and outer) workings of the human body. Memory is one such phenomena that is being studied deeply and not just to understand it but being able to enhance it and really make use of it for various applications.

One such recurring application of our memories is to be able to record them digitally and play them like we would play movies on a screen. Achieving this would surely be a feat of a kind and something that could revolutionise several industries.

A World Changing Feat?

Being able to store your memories onto any medium kind of ensures a sort of digital immortality. It would be like a backup of your brain and the next best thing to being able to upload your consciousness.

It could have a world of impact in the field of medicine where patients who lose their memory due to a trauma could be able to replay all of their memories to learn who they are.

It could help solve (and confirm) any sort of crimes by peering into the memories of criminals. Of course, this would also entail a world of privacy issues as well.

It could also help solve disputes among two people as they could simply revisit the memory of the situation in question. I see many, many applications in the education sector as well. Also, how great would it be for science, research and development if the most important memories of great scientists could be preserved for generations to come?

Mentions In The Fictional World

Storing and viewing of a person’e memory has been sort of a recurring theme in the fictional world. The first one ever that I remember is that of the Harry Potter movies wherein Professor Dumbledore had a pensieve where he used to revisit old memories.

In Black Mirror (science fiction TV series), there was an episode where detectives were shown using a memory box which could play out a person’s memories as a video clip which helped them solve cases.

But it’s only in the fictional world that this is possible. Scientists have been trying to do this in the real world for decades now and sometimes we read reports here and there of breakthroughs in this regard though nothing concrete has been developed yet.

I guess it will still take a few more decades before we will be able to do this. Imagine being able to record your dreams. Now that will be something else, wouldn’t it?