This corroborates the hypothesis that memory retrieval is followed by a period in which it must be reconsolidated into long-term memory, and disrupted reconsolidation renders the memory susceptible to manipulation and even erasure. In contrast, their memories for the non-retrieved stories were unimpaired. Patients who were subsequently given anesthesia and electroconvulsive therapy ( ECT: electrical stimulation applied to the cranium to elicit short-lived seizure activity in the brain) were later unable to remember the story that they had retrieved prior to ECT. Unipolar-depressive patients were shown emotionally-arousing stories in a slideshow, and one week later they were asked to remember one of those stories.
However, this experiment was performed in rats and their “memories” were merely conditioned fear responses: so what about emotional long-term memories in humans? Remarkably, Kroes and colleagues (2014) recently provided early evidence for the reconsolidation hypothesis in humans as well. As author and blogger Steven Johnson points out, it is vaguely possible that the basic procedure in Eternal Sunshine could be similarly taking advantage of memories’ vulnerability during retrieval in order to target them for erasure. In other words, retrieving a memory renders it susceptible to disruption, and protein synthesis is necessary for reconsolidating it into long-term memory (read about this study and more on false memories in a previous NeuWrite post!). demonstrated convincingly that protein synthesis in the amygdala (a region of the brain strongly implicated in fear conditioning, a basic form of learning and memory) was required for the reconsolidation of fear memories in rats. Most relevant to the film, the “reconsolidation” hypothesis of memory retrieval, which is the idea that a retrieved memory is made fragile and must be re-stored in the brain as long-term memory, was gaining significant traction.
By the time Eternal Sunshine was released in 2004, our understanding of memory had undergone some important transformations. Learning and memory has been a hot topic of neuroscience research throughout the last couple of decades. First, its portrayal of memory as a biological phenomenon that is highly malleable and susceptible to manipulation has proven surprisingly accurate, and second, it hits on some fundamental principles of emotional memories that have a true neurological basis. are pure fiction (for instance, the “brain machine”, pictured here, generates brain images that look like fMRI scans yet is drastically different from a modern MRI scanner), what is interesting about the film is what it gets right. Although the exact methods utilized by Lacuna, Inc. (Interestingly, “Lacuna” literally means an unfilled space or gap, and “lacunar amnesia” is used to describe loss of memory about a particular event). Joel learns that Clementine has had him “erased” from her memory by a company called Lacuna, Inc. Once we learn that the film is being told largely through Joel’s memories of their past relationship, the film shifts from a traditional rom-com to something much more complicated and provocative. In fact, it is on Valentine’s Day that he meets Clementine, and from there we embark on a wild ride through Joel and Clementine’s relationship that’s almost as convoluted as the brain itself.
The film even begins on Valentine’s Day, which Joel aptly describes in the opening line as “a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap”.
However, it fits well with our Valentine’s week because it is, in large part, a love story between Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet). Eternal Sunshine is a difficult film to categorize it is part romance, part drama, part comedy, and some even say part “sci-fi”.
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