Memories can be erased using drugs

They proved their hypothesis by showing that regardless of the taste the rats were trained to avoid, they forget their learned aversion after a single application of the drug.

The technique worked as successfully a month after the memories were formed, which is analogous to years in humans, and all signs so far indicate that the affected unpleasant memories of the taste had indeed disappeared.

This was discovered in Israel by Prof. Yadin Dudai, Head of the Weizmann Institute’s Neurobiology Department. What can go wrong ? .
Source:
pressesc.com...


[edit on 20/8/2007 by rocksolidbrain]

wow while intriguing, it sound likely it could be quite dangerous if in the wrong hands, which it probably already is.
so i wonder the drug is, and what it consists of.
now i am sure that there are good things that this drug can be used for as well.
but idk it still sounds kind of dangerous.

From source
They hypothesized, that this protein, an enzyme located in the synapses called PKMzeta, acts as a miniature memory “machine” that keeps memory up and running by changing some facets of the structure of synaptic contacts. But it must be persistently active to maintain this change, which is brought about by learning.

That sounds creepily too like Brave New World, a chemical that could either inhibit new learning, or perhaps even re-format the brain as you would a HDD

"...I'm so happy to be a Delta"

Why would anyone want to develop such things except for "nefarious" purposes ??

This is something I wouldnt mind seeing disappear and not be reported on again, personally....

If there is a potential non-military upside to this one, however, im all ears

Peace

Sounds like a good treatment for PTSD. Severe cases can hardly function as so many every day events trigger associated recall of the traumatic event. If an event site could be observed under an imager, the site could be eliminated. The only question is what happens to the associations?

Well we already know drugs and alcohol can prevent long-term memories from forming. But this seems to be something different, a drug administered after the memory was formed that deleted it. My main question is the specificity of this. Does it remove all memories, or can it be targeted to specific ones?

Obviously this needs much more research before it could even be attempted on humans.

This would be most useful. Humans are emotional beings and many suffer from emotional longings and pains often based on memories. If such a drug is sold, painful memories can be quickly erased and sufferers will be able to get on with life, instead of being held back by baggages of the past.

Maybe it just kills the sense of taste, and the rats can't tell what they're eating anymore.

Maybe it makes them indifferent to pain.

It's sort of like the flea experiment - if you pull off all its legs, the flea becomes deaf.

HUH? What was that? I don't know I forget so easily these days.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
Well we already know drugs and alcohol can prevent long-term memories from forming. But this seems to be something different, a drug administered after the memory was formed that deleted it. My main question is the specificity of this. Does it remove all memories, or can it be targeted to specific ones?

From what I understand of how the brain wires itself, repetitive learning will create a bio-chemical bond between synapses so creating a 'habitual pathway' and the more you learn/practice, the more embedded the connection...an analogy would be a footpath that is regularly used so that over time it becomes a road and eventually a motorway.

It sounds like the function of this compound in some way resets/erodes that synapse-to-synapse bio-chemical link.

All newly learnt 'footpath' memory-information routes would be immediately reset, and those that are hard-wired, the road/motorway routes that have been established by learnt behaviour over a greater number of repetitions would be weakened and 'downgraded'...a large enough doseage could even reset all those lifetime's worth of hardened learning-connections with the effect of rendering the brain back to the unconnected synaptic state of an infant...

...a vision of a truely terrible new form of weapon!