The venerable Lockergnome recently looked at memory technology – specifically, a nasal spray that boosts your ability to learn:
In a research report featured as the cover story of the October 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, these scientists show that a molecule from the body’s immune system
(interleukin-6) when administered through the nose helps the brain retain emotional and procedural memories during REM sleep.…
To make this discovery, Marshall and colleagues had 17 healthy young men spend two nights in the laboratory. On each night after reading either an emotional or neutral short story, they sprayed a fluid into their nostrils which contained either interleukin-6 or a placebo fluid. The subsequent sleep and brain electric activity was monitored throughout the night. The next morning subjects wrote down as many words as they could remember from each of the two stories. Those who received the dose of IL-6 could remember more words.
You can read more of the study at the FASEB Journal, specifically the poetically-named “Enhancing influence of intranasal interleukin-6 on slow-wave activity and memory consolidation during sleep.”