LOST MEMORIES

One aspect of LOST was the disconnect between the island time period and the memories lost in the sideways purgatory world.

This was never explained to the viewers.

Now, the federal government is probing a memory restoration program which sort of fits science into the breach of LOST's lost science fiction explanation of memory loss.

Memory loss can be from trauma, old age, chemical imbalances and genetics.

The U.S. government's new Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program has been created for an implantable neural-interface designed to restore lost memories in those suffering traumatic brain injuries.

As stated by DARPA in its recent press release, traumatic brain injuries (TBI) affect roughly 1.7 million civilians each year and an astounding 270,000 military servicemembers since 2000. Further, TBI has shown to impair one's ability to recall memories created before suffering the injury while also limiting the capability to form new ones after. With the RAM program, DARPA intends to expedite the process of developing tech designed to bridge the gaps created in injured brains. In other words, TBI sufferers may not have to worry about lost memories if DARPA has its way.

The RAM program aims to accomplish this memory-saving goal by performing two steps. First, DARPA hopes to create a multi-scale computational model that describes how neurons code memories. Assuming it can gather the necessary data, DARPA's next step is to create a neural-interface armed with the ability to bridge memory flow gaps created in the brain after a traumatic injury. The implant would essentially stimulate the desired target in the brain to help it restore its ability to create new memories.

DARPA says it plans on working with a number of human volunteers for its clinical trials and also intends to run studies of the tech with animals. For the volunteers, it's targeting individuals with traumatic brain injuries who have trouble encoding or recalling memories, as well as those with other neurological conditions scheduled to undergo neurosurgery. Moreover, DARPA already has the insight of a relative Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications panel for supplemental information regarding human and animal trials of this nature.

"As the technology of these fully implantable devices improves, and as we learn more about how to stimulate the brain ever more precisely to achieve the most therapeutic effects, I believe we are going to gain a critical capacity to help our wounded warriors and others who today suffer from intractable neurological problems" DARPA's biological technologies program manager told Popular Science magazine. 

No official timetable was given regarding the release of the RAM program's test results, though DARPA did say it had already begun administering trials since September. If all goes according to plan, the agency intends to expand the context of its research to those outside of the military who also experience brain trauma.

It is uncertain how a neuro-implant can "restore" lost memories if the memory center of the brain is damaged. However, in most defense projects there is something called redundancy. It is the concept that you put in a back-up into the main program or function in case of emergency. Humans also have redundant properties such as two lungs and two kidneys, in case one is compromised. But since memories are so individual and coded in brains by chemical-protein-neuron receptors, it is not like a computer chip can "reload" lost memories into an individual (like the concept in Ghost in the Shell series). 

But LOST's sideways reveal of past memories seems to indicate, at least on the surface, that the main characters' memories were either a) blocked or b) damaged when they eventually died on Earth. They could not move on until they were "awakened" by some strong emotional tie or bond. 

PICKED ON LOCKE

No character had it as bad as John Locke.

Locke was the "walking" definition of pessimism, a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen; a lack of hope or confidence in the future.

In philosophy, it is  a belief that this world is as bad as it could be or that evil will ultimately prevail over good.


His life went from bad, to worst, to crippling bad, to really bad to sadly dead. Whether Locke was intentionally written as a punching bag character, we saw him get beat up over and over again. His life started as being abandoned by his parents. His mother was crazy, and his missing father was a rogue con man. He grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home. He had no family. He built up bitterness. He wanted to be something he was not (like a jock when he was a good student). He turned away from science, something he may have been good at, to the self-imposed exile of dead end jobs. Misery was his only companion for most of his early adulthood. He tried to find a purpose and new family like the time he joined a commune. But as often happened, Locke was played for the fool. The family was a band of drug dealers; and his position in the group was to turn to snitch. Locke was often confused by his naive take on people; he trusted others too much that he constantly got burned. Nothing more tragic than reconnecting with his father. But that turned Locke into just another sucker - - - costing him first his kidney, and then his ability to walk when he was shoved out of a skyscraper window. Now, both a physical and emotional cripple, Locke's last hope for personal success and achievement was to go on his Outback journey. But that was halted before it began. He looked stupid and weak.


And what happens to stupid and weak people? They get played for fools.

Locke had his chance to re-invent himself after the plane crash. The miracle that he could now walk meant that his dream of being an outback hunter could come true. He relished the opportunity to be the big boar hunter. He thought people would have to respect his skills and his leadership. But in reality, the rest of the survivors were taken back by his aggressiveness to the point of fear. Only Walt wanted to hang around Locke (even though Michael told Walt not to do so.) In short order, Locke's real personality began to surface and he started to retreat from the group because they had chosen Jack as their leader.


Just as before, Locke went off on a personal quest just like with the commune. He was manipulated by the island's wild charms, the mystery of the Hatch, the manipulation by Ben and Jacob, and then seized by the smoke monster. Locke came out on the wrong end of each encounter. His stubborn position led to the Hatch explosion when the Numbers were not entered in time. His stupidity in playing a computer game led to the communications station to explode.


He was shot, beat up, time skipped,  ripped away from the island by the FDW turn, re-crippled, and dismissed by all the O6 members in his quest to have everyone return to the island to "meet their destiny."  Locke could never explain what that destiny meant, to the others or even to himself. Even when he was at his lowest moment, in a seedy LA hotel room ready to end his life, Ben extracted the last bit of information from him - - - then murdered him in a staged suicide. The world would then view Locke's life as meaningless, sad end.


Why Locke's body had to return to the island was not explained. It just added to the humiliation. For the smoke monster already had the skills to shape shift so it did not need Locke's dead body to become Flocke. Smokey used Locke's appearance to manipulate the candidates in order to turn into evil minions. The only impression Locke's death made was on Jack, who finally realized that Locke may have been right about the island. But, like a virus, this notion infected Jack and turned the rest of his life into one like Locke's: meaningless with a sad ending.


But there was nothing worse to kick a down Locke more than the actual finale. He shows up at the after life church, alone. He sits alone in the front pew across from Jack. Why is Locke alone? There was no one in his life that he could share the moment? What about Helen, who predeceased him after their break-up fight? She was his companion in the sideways world so why was she not at the church? Was she a figment of Locke's fantasy mind? What about his mother? Was her abandonment of him as a child so great that he had no bonds with her? So it was very odd that  Locke was the only person in the church without a family relation or partner.

So why was Locke then even present at the church? None of the main characters such as Jack, Sawyer, Sayid, Kate, Rose or Bernard, felt any close connection with Locke. In fact, most of them turned their back on him. Many of Locke's decisions and actions caused them great pain, grief and sorrow. Locke looked out of place in the church because he was out of place. Everyone else in the sideways world had found happiness, but not Locke. It seems that the show dumped on Locke one last time in the final episode.

LOSING ONE'S MIND

The Associated Press reported a very strange story about a man who woke up in a hotel with no memory of his past life, but actually living a new one.

Four months ago a man was found unconscious in a California desert motel who awoke with no memory of his past and speaking only Swedish. The Florida man called himself Johan Ek.
 He was found with a duffel bag of exercise clothes, a backpack and tennis rackets. He also carried four forms of identification — a passport, a California identification card, a veteran's medical card and a Social Security card — all of which identified him as Michael Boatwright.

Doctors diagnosed Boatwright with "Transient Global Amnesia," a condition triggered by physical or emotional trauma that can last for several months. The rare mental disorder is characterized by memory loss, "sudden and unplanned travel," and possible adoption of a new identity. He does not recall his family or his past life.

The AP story also references an incident last year, when a North Dakota college student went missing for nearly a week before turning up in Arizona. She also had a bout of amnesia and didn't know who she was. Her mother said she has had recurring amnesia since suffering a head injury years ago. It is unexpected when it happens to her daughter.

This story is every "LOST" like in that a person's mental condition can suddenly change so that person adopts a new, complex identity with no memories of their real past. 

Could this be the explanation of the sideways world?

It has always been problematic that the main characters in the sideways world could not remember their island time. It was more complicated by the fact that the island time relationships allegedly "created" the sideways world so the lost souls could meet each other in the after life. If one believes the island time was a different level of purgatory and the main characters were already dead, then there is some supernatural basis for memory loss. But if one believes the main characters were alive on the island, then how can their memories be altered or suppressed so completely in the sideways world (only to be awakened by a sudden, emotional event that triggers memory recall). Was it only necessary for the island survivors to have a connection with each other to forge bonds that would create their pre-island past in the sideways dream state? In a roundabout way, each member in the church (except Christian) had an island "constant" present in the pews which somehow allowed all of them to become reunited in the after life.

But the alternative is that sideways is not what it seems. The sideways world may just be an amnesia induced alternative reality or psychosis dream of the island characters who were so traumatized by the crash and being hunted by the Others, MIB and Jacob. This explanation would basically state that most of Season 6 was immaterial because the sideways story arcs were irrelevant to the reality of the Island and its inhabitants. No one every reunited in the sideways world - - - that was Jack's final thoughts or wishes. But that does not mean it came true.