Can I take a drug to wipe out one particular memory?
 

Props to Julia Layton for this article she's been on some illy shit lately so everyone begin their post with "THANK YOU JULIA."


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Can I take a drug to wipe out one particular memory?
by Julia Layton


March 16, 2007
Researchers at New York University's LeDoux Laboratory have successfully deleted a single, targeted fear memory using drug therapy in rats. Their results, published in Nature Neuroscience, show that the removal of one memory from a rat's brain did not affect other memories there, and that the overall memory system was unharmed. The possibility of picking a particular memory to erase holds tremendous potential in treating people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders and other fear-related mental illnesses.

When the brain forms a memory, part of the process involves physically moving that memory from a neural network that supports short-term memory to one that holds long-term memories. The researchers, led by Joseph LeDoux, aimed to interrupt the transfer of a fear memory with the overall goal of deleting it. The way the scientists went about deleting the targeting memory implies that the act of recalling a memory involves a physical transfer as well. They were able to erase a memory by recalling it while the rats were under the influence of a drug call U0126, which induces limited memory loss (humans can't get it -- it's only approved for use in other animals).

The process they used for the study is fascinating. The researchers began with classical fear conditioning to create fear memories in a group of rats. They played two different musical tones, each one accompanied by an electric shock. The rats all developed two separate fears, one for each tone, which showed up in brain scans as increased neural activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain directly related to fear. Each time they heard either tone, they became afraid (presumably expecting the shock to follow).

Next, they divided the rats into two groups. The control group was left alone. The experimental group was drugged with U0126. All of the rats were then exposed to just one of the fear-inducing tones.

Once the experimental-group rats got the amnesia drug out their system, all of the rats were tested again. The researchers played both tones. The rats in the control group still showed increased activity in the amygdala in response to both tones. The rats in the experimental group only had a fear response to one of the tones. They were no longer afraid of the tone they'd been exposed to while under the influence of the drug. It's as if the process of recalling it brought it out of long-term memory, and the drug prevented it from being transferred back once the tone stopped playing.

Pointing to the change in amygdala activity, which is central to the brain's system of storing and recalling fearful memories (see How Fear Works to learn about this process), the researchers say the memory was not simply disconnected from fear, but that it was actually erased in its entirety. In other words, it was not that the rats learned not to be afraid of the tone; it was as if the rats had never learned to be afraid of the tone in the first place. And the fear of the second tone -- the one they'd not recalled while under U0126 -- was still active. The rest of the rats' memories appeared to be unaffected by the process.

The implications for the field of psychiatry are pretty staggering. Someone with a phobia of snakes or heights or flying could potentially receive treatment that would erase the phobia by bringing it up under the influence of a certain drug. People with post-traumatic stress disorder, whose lives are severely impacted a terrifying memory, could be cured by removing that memory from their brain.

And of course, the rest of us could use the process to wipe that person who broke our heart out of existence.
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Sounds lucrative. And yet the part of my memory that senses incoming doom notices that wiping out a particular memory can also react like a game of minefeild and any other area of ur brain that was influenced by that memory, most likely a great deal of it in HUMAN brains not rats, could no longer be logical and can be rearranged. Rats probably work by impulses like alot of other animals. Although I don't exactly have a phd in rodents. Except pichu(basic pokemon) pikachu(2nd stage reached with battling and breeding), and raichu(reached with use of thunderstone).

^ werd...im having tests for anxiety attacks...gimme gimme gimme...

Ungreatful asshole >:0 I don't hear any thanks for julia

lmao...thank you Julia...yo...this article is quite interesting but bear in mind how complex a human brain is...in order for the drug to work efficiently in humans, would they have to re-create the thing that gives us fear like they're doing with the rats?...or...coz we'd know what the drug was for...would the drug pick up on that feeling and cancel out the fear that way?

That's just it though, that's where the whole minefeild thing comes into play. In mindfeild you click on these random boxes and if u hit the wrong one a million other boxes explode that were connected to it. Let's say I was scared of fire because i toucehd the stove one time as a child, but it left me really scared and I couldn't cook anymore. Let's say they became super geniuses and said lets erase this memory. I'm gonna forget what I learned about it. What if I forget not to touch fire? What if I forget what fire even looks like? What if I forget how to work a stove? Fear teaches us shit and its a subconsious alert tool thats meant to watch your back because you don't have eyes everywhere. I think it was Mark twain that said "it is not absense of fear, but mastery of it that makes us brave" or some other really cool person.

Not saying though that I don't have some memories I would REALLY REALLY like to delete. Like this morning I was watching sixteen candles and... you know it was like bad and stuff.

lol werd...i wanna erase my memory of knowing who Barbara Streisand is...now THATS scary...but what you're saying is right...hit he wrong box...you could be fucked for life potentially

fuck her...

its our past experiences that make us who we are today...

i wouldn't be as wise as i'm today with the out the mistakes i made yesterday

^^lol, word.....

yeah but i some cases this may not be the idea of other people...some people are to afraid to go out their home because of some traumatic shit and become total recluses...how about if you were raped...and bear in mind the person was doing time for it...but your so fucked up emotionally from it you wanna get back to your old self...

I know an easier method......

get a grade 3 concussion....

works EVERY time.............

hahah @ white powder..

i knew someone was gonna come n say that "rape" shit..

i know lots of people who have been raped, n say they are more inpowered by it...

erasing something is compelty agasint "god" ..imo..cuz what about free will?

what about learning from the past to make sure it wont happen in the future..

this drug shit is only going to make us more zombie like then we already are

bro i'm takin bout free will in another thread...we dont have it...everything is pre-determined...and its good you know people who've been raped (not in that sense) and come out better...but there's people who can't cope with it the way some people handle it...

and bro...so many things are against God nowadays it's hard to keep count...

wtf? mad dog...i know your a smart cat....

everything determined?

grr...

god gave us free will so that way everything wasn't determined...he knows we have choices in life...but he gave us free will to choose what path we want...he knows not what we will choose

i agree that things are agasint gods imagination of the earth he created orginally....