Scientists are close to being able to erase memories. Is this a good thing?

[Banana]

How Scientists Are Learning To Shape Our Memory

The next treatment for trauma could be spotless minds.
By
Virginia Hughes
Posted 11.25.2013 at 10:13 am
65

Down Memory Lane
The human brain has roughly 100 billion neurons and can store about 2.5 petabytes of information. But where you put your keys last night? The answer is always suspiciously unavailable.
Sam Kaplan
Roadside bombs, childhood abuse, car accidents—they form memories that can shape (and damage) us for a lifetime. Now, a handful of studies have shown that we’re on the verge of erasing and even rewriting memories. The hope is that this research will lead to medical treatments, especially for addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Researchers have known for decades that memories are unreliable. They’re particularly adjustable when actively recalled because at that point they’re pulled out of a stable molecular state. Last spring, scientists published a study performed at the University of Washington in which adult volunteers completed a survey about their eating and drinking habits before age 16. A week later, they were given personalized analyses of their answers that stated—falsely—that they had gotten sick from rum or vodka as a teen. One in five not only didn’t notice the lie, but also recalled false memories about it and rated that beverage as less desirable than they had before. Studies like these point to possible treatments for mental health problems. Both PTSD and addiction disorders hinge on memories that can trigger problematic behaviors, such as crippling fear caused by loud noises or cravings brought about by the sight of drug paraphernalia.

Studies have found chemical compounds that can be used to subdue or even delete memories.Several studies have found chemical compounds that can be used to subdue or even delete memories in mice (and maybe someday in people). In June, a report led by an Emory University researcher showed that SR-8993, a drug that acts on the brain’s opioid receptors, can prevent a fear memory from forming. Researchers strapped mice to a wooden board for two hours—a stressful experience that later gave them a heightened sense of fear similar to PTSD. But mice given SR-8993 before or after the stressful incident were less likely to end up this way. Another study identified a drug, Latrunculin A, that can erase memories days later. The researchers trained rodents to consume methamphetamine in an environment with distinctive visual, tactile, and scent cues such as black walls, gridded floors, and the scent of vanilla or peppermint. Rodents that were injected with Latrunculin A two days later didn’t seek out meth when returned to that environment, but others did. Latrunculin A is known to mess up scaffolding that supports connections between neurons. Considering how broadly these two drugs affect the brain, there’s a possibility of serious side effects.

To make more targeted treatments, researchers will ultimately need to understand how the brain’s neurons encode each memory. Last year, Susumu Tonegawa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that individual memories in mice leave telltale molecular signatures in the brain’s hippocampus region. In July, his group caused mice to falsely associate an old memory with a new context—essentially creating a false memory. First, they genetically engineered a mouse so that when its hippocampal cells were activated, they would be tagged with a protein that the researchers could switch on later. Then, they put the mouse in an unfamiliar cage. The next day, they moved it to a strikingly different cage (smelly with black walls). Then, at precisely the same time, they gave it an uncomfortable shock and switched on the tagging protein to briefly activate cells that had been active in the old cage. When they put the mouse back in the old cage, it froze as if afraid—as if it had a false memory of being shocked there.

The idea of scientists manipulating memory does, naturally, sound a bit creepy. But it also points to some possible good: treatment for millions of people tormented by real memories. And that’s something worth remembering.



http://www.popsci.com/article/scienc...spotless-minds

At first you think of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and you think about how that could be beneficial or not. But then again I think that would bring nothing but dangerous implications. You get government that has access to erase certain memories from people and you probably have a government that is able to pull off whatever it wants.

[Order 66]

first thing i'd erase is my memory of indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull

[reprise85]

Erasing a memory from explicit memory (voluntary recall) doesn't mean the impact on implict memory would be changed.

For example, if you experienced long term sexual abuse as a child, erasing the memories will not necessarily change the complex syndrome of symptoms you experience as a result of the abnormal environment you were repeatedly exposed to.

[reprise85]

the memory isn't the whole problem, in other words. the problem is the way the experience affects many systems in your brain, not just voluntary recall.

it might be more useful for one time event traumas, but i still sort of doubt it. right after the event happens, your brain chemistry is changing. you can't reverse that by erasing memory after the fact.

[Banana]

No you're completely wrong. Scientists are developing a way to remove all of that.

[Trotskilicious]

erase memories of banana too lazy to write joke

[null123]

reprise is correct of course

they're gonna need to build a time machine

[reprise85]

Originally Posted by Banana

No you're completely wrong. Scientists are developing a way to remove all of that.

So they are going to somehow erase the millions of cascade effects that an event causes in your brain? Like resetting it back to before it happened? What about the effects that change your view of the world than in turn cause more cascade effects as time goes on? It's completely impossible. This happens immediately after any event, and the longer it goes on, the further affect it has on you, because it affects your system of meaning and how you see every other thing that happens to you.

[Trotskilicious]

no you're wrong, banana read it in maxim while on the toilet

[reprise85]

Imagine the many worlds theory of space/time. Once you take a path, you cannot take another one. So even if you theoretically erase the memory or event of when a path diverged from another, you are still on that path and cannot go back in time to before it happened and choose another path.

[null123]

even if memory deletion were a solution to trauma, based on that article it doesn't look like they're "close"

like they've figured out how to cause amnesia but they haven't figured out how the brain maps memory. so basically they've figured out how to achieve results as good as what can be achieved by addiction and compulsion

[null123]

just smoke pcp and beat your head against a brick wall

[Trotskilicious]

comma banana specifically

I want to erase my memories of movies and games so I can play and watch them for the first time again

[Starla]

Originally Posted by reprise85

the memory isn't the whole problem, in other words. the problem is the way the experience affects many systems in your brain, not just voluntary recall.

it might be more useful for one time event traumas, but i still sort of doubt it. right after the event happens, your brain chemistry is changing. you can't reverse that by erasing memory after the fact.

Yep. Erasing the memory will not necessarily stop somatic memories.

[slunken]

Erasing memories: what could possibly go wrong?

Originally Posted by Aeris Hilton

I want to erase my memories of movies and games so I can play and watch them for the first time again

I realized I mostly don't want this
A lot of shit I loved I wouldn't be able to recapture now just because I'm older
Dammit

[Order 66]

i'd love to experience paul blart for the first time again

[Lucky Day Spa]

Originally Posted by Aeris Hilton

I realized I mostly don't want this
A lot of shit I loved I wouldn't be able to recapture now just because I'm older
Dammit

that just means you have to erase more

HEY DOC ERASE EVERYTHING AFTER THE OPENING SCREEN OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2