So then, can we call you "Skippy?" 
DD
Checks user name... I already thought I was..
First, it is the memory, then comes the Wifi connection and internet in your head, then comes the spam and viruses.
The other question, if they can help you remember, can they insert memories or is it only memories you put in them?
Only memories put into them so far. As far as I can tell, reading the abstracts etc. the neural interface just records, and creates virtual neural connections that the living neurons can receive signals back from. There's no mechanism for knowing what the connections mean, or exactly what they do. So therefore there's no way to re-arrange them to mean something else.. yet.
And I suspect that if you imposed a connection set into the chip, and just hooked it up to a brain, there's no telling how the living neurons will interpret the signal. For all we know, it could take a set of pre-made connections that were intended to be a memory of an image and impressions of a beach scene, and decide to use that pattern to represent the smell of chocolate.
While we're starting to get some ideas about the signals and paths for various processes like vision, hearing, and can even do differential MRI scans and map out the connections and paths for various kinds of thoughts, we're not even close to understanding a 1:1 relationship for various concepts, or sensations. Or even if everyone has the same low level language going on in our wiring. Or when we do set up interfaces, if we're truly even sending the right signals in these interface experiments, it's almost complete garbage, but the brain is really doing 99% of the work and just sorting it all out.
However, this is a start.
Some other interesting stuff:
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=241 (over 6 years old now... but still interesting)
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface (Scroll down to section 2.2. First ever images (AFAIK) actually pulled out of a cat's vision processing center, as it was fed images real-time on a screen.)
Even better ones with some animated gif's of what the cats saw.
http://www.biotele.com/vision.htmlEven cooler, taking the data at different points in the vision stream between the eye, and the visual cortex offers some suggestion that neural "preprocessing" in a cat's retinas and optic nerves key in on a cat-face interpretation of human faces first, before seeing what is actually there, in this case, the face of one of the scientists.
Which obviously begs the question how much preprocessing do human brains and sense systems do too? And how much that we think is based in our cognition, is really just reflexive expert systems feeding us predigested data of what we expect to see. This has been suspected for some time, due to pictures and faces in clouds, optical illusions etc., however, to see it in actual data taken in situ from another mammal's brain is amazing.
