A worker feeds white rats at an animal laboratory of a medical
school on February 16, 2008 in Chongqing Municipality, China. A
worker feeds white rats at an animal laboratory of a medical
school on February 16, 2008 in Chongqing Municipality, China.
(Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)  Sometime soon, a lab mouse
could wake up thinking he had snuggled up to a girl mouse the
night before. But he hadn't. The memory is fake.  Scientists at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have successfully
implanted a false memory into a mouse's brain — a seemingly far-
fetched idea reminiscent of a science fiction film.  "If mice
had Hollywood, this would be 'Inception' for them," said one of
the lead researchers, MIT neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, whose
study was published online Thursday in the journal Science.
Ramirez and his colleagues tagged brain cells associated with a
specific memory, and then tweaked that memory to make the mouse
believe something had happened when it didn't.  Although
implanting a memory won't