ideas of the 7am

how do you study the effects of forgetting on psychological health? want to pursue gazzaniga's idea that we spend so much time forgetting that the impact of memory-enhancing drugs might spur on a whole new set of mental disorders. That we create narratives through selective placement of experiences and events into a storyline that implies the rejection of incompatible memories. (and the related idea that at a certain point the number of incompatibles accumulate to the point of spurring a shift in perception. or understanding.) Well, I don't care so much about the rejected memories as I do about what a person does with what he/she does remember. Is there a link between mental disorder and really great memory? Probably not. What about areas of the brain that are activated when a person experiences confusion --- higher activation in memory areas (hippocampus? ug need to learn brain) as well? (if confusion can serve as proxy for narrative failure)
this whole idea of narrative is too conceptually distant from what you can measure, but it does give a more interesting shape to the musings on the possible impacts of better memory.

other thought - how can you write about emergent social properties from a scientific perspective? effects of caffeine on how people work. doctors working ridiculously long hours. being able to command your mind to pay attention on demand. what has this meant overall in terms of our ability to be productive -- and the pressures it places on others to similarly become superhuman caffeine sinkholes? if some people are relying on caffeine to raise their productivity levels, presumably there is some social pressure to also push yourself further and buy into the stimulus game. obviously this would translate into the cog enhancement debate, but how do you get anything concrete about caffeine and social patterns? look at consumption patterns.

start with studies on caffeine and negative side effects. that study of mice with improved learning and intensified susceptibility to pain.