Discovery Banishes Bad Memories
Welcome back!
Researchers have found a way to block and even delete single, specifically unwanted memories while leaving other memories intact. By injecting an amnesia drug at the right time, when a subject was recalling a particular thought, neuro-scientists discovered they could dislocate the way the memory is stored and even make it disappear.
Sparked controversy has naturally ensued by parliamentary advisers, insisting upon new regulations to control the use of the drugs to prevent them from being used or abused by healthy people as a ‘quick fix’. So much for saving yourself hundreds of dollars on that psychiatry bill. Painting Kim Barker
Psychiatrists at McGill University, in Montreal, and Harvard University, in Boston, used an amnesia drug to ‘dampen’ the memories of trauma victims, reports Telegraph co uk.
Professor Karim Nader, of McGill University, said, “When you remember old memories they can become ‘unstored’ and then have to be ‘restored’.”
“As the memory is getting restored, we gave patients a drug that turns down the emotional part of the memory. It left the conscious part of the memory intact, so they could still remember all the details but without being overwhelmed by the memory.”
The research reveals memories can be manipulated — they act as if made from glass, existing in a molten state as they are being created, before turning solid. When the memory is recalled, it becomes molten again and can be altered before it resets.
The drug used by the scientists is thought to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow the memory to ‘harden’ after it is recalled.
Researchers used propranolol, a drug normally used to treat hypertension in heart disease patients but also known to cause memory problems. Accident and rape victims were treated for 10 days with the drug or with dummy pills, while asked to describe their memories of a harrowing 
event that happened 10 years earlier.
A week later, they found that the patients given the drug suffered fewer signs of stress such as raised heart rate when recalling their trauma.
Scientists at New York University have also published a study claiming to have erased a single memory from the brains of rats while leaving the rest of the animals’ memories still intact. Top photo Mivox, bottom photo JRHFilms.
The rats were trained to associate two musical tones with a mild electrical shock so that when they heard either of the tones they would brace themselves for a shock.
The researchers then gave half the rats a drug, called U0126 and known to cause limited amnesia, when playing one of the musical tones.
After the treatment, the rats that had been given the drug no longer associated that particular tone with an imminent shock but still braced themselves upon hearing the second tone, demonstrating only one memory had been deleted.
Professor Joseph LeDoux who led the New York team said, “Such treatments may have highly specific and potentially permanent effects.”
The research has alarmed some experts, who fear that memory altering drugs could be abused by healthy individuals to delete unwanted memories on a whim.
A new report published by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, which advises MPs about scientific advances, warned that regulations need to be put in place to restrict the use of any memory-blocking drugs, imposing strict limits on their prescription.
Dr. Peter Bordersaid, “There has been a deafening silence from the regulators about whether or not they might consider licensing pharmaceuticals for use in individuals where there is no medical benefits. There is a need for someone to consider how to regulate these things.”
Tags:altering bad memory discovery memories nightmare psychiatry science trauma
That could spell a whole mess of trouble! The potential for misuse would be enormous.
P.S. I was just over at Kim’s. What a wonderful portait she did of you. It’s very beautiful!
Have a great day;
Anna
Good to see you Anna
Yes, I can see that this could be abused very easily. Many of these positive discoveries have the potential for some serious neative repercussions as well. But it will be very helpful to those whose lives are crippled by traumas they’ve endured.
Yes, that was incredible what Kim did for me, she’s amazingly talented!
hi Deborah
this sounds like a wonderful discovery…..I hope that there is a real possibility for this to help trauma victims…without side effects…
thanks so much for including my painting in your article….I have linked to your post from my poeartica site where I used the same painting to illustrate my latest poem…what a co-incidence…….
Removing memories of failed relationships would probably make the world a MUCH happier place!
Kim, that’s wild that we were both linking to each other with the same painting! I’ll come have a boo
Andy, too funny! I could think of a few