Last week I wrote my blog about a woman known as AJ who could not forget. This week I want to write about a drug that has been tested on rats, which selectively erases memories or causes limited amnesia. Clementine from the film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind did this by enlisting the help of Lacuna Inc. This company erased all the memories good and bad that she had of her relationship with Joel.
According to research done by Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York University and his colleagues, the drug called U0126 can selectively erase memories in rats while keeping other memories intact. The study took rats and trained them to fear two musical tones by playing either one at the same time the experimenters gave the rats an electric shock. They then gave half of the rats the drug, replayed only one of the tones, and shocked the rats. A day later, the rats were exposed to the tone that was replayed and the untreated rats continued to show signs of fear. The rats that were given the drug were not afraid of the tone because somehow the drug caused them to forget the relation between that specific tone and the electric shock. These results also shows the role of the amygdala in the formation of frightening memories because the rats that were treated with the drug showed decreased communication between the neurons in this region. An increased activity in this area is only seen when fearful memories are formed which led researchers to infer that the memory of the fearful tone was deleted.
A difficult break-up is a minor reason for erasing a memory but imagine if a person could erase the memory of a traumatic experience like sexual abuse or war experience. For many people who go through these experiences, large amounts of therapy sessions and the intake of anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants are needed. These experiences can also affect a person’s daily life and impede them from doing every day things like getting up in the morning. For people who have tried everything from drugs to hypnosis, this drug could me their last and only option. Taking this memory-erasing drug if it is ever approved by the FDA would allow these people to regain control of their lives.
This research is very promising but it is not going to be approved by the FDA anytime soon because a rat’s brain is nothing like the human brain in terms of complexity and the amount of information stored. It is also very hard to pinpoint the exact location of a traumatic memory. If only our brains were an organized filing cabinet, this drug can give individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder an endless amount of possibilities and opportunities.
This article can be found here:
http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2368/news/2007/070305/full/070305-17.html
I also found a website for the “Lacuna Inc.” the fictional memory erasing company from the movie.
According to research done by Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York University and his colleagues, the drug called U0126 can selectively erase memories in rats while keeping other memories intact. The study took rats and trained them to fear two musical tones by playing either one at the same time the experimenters gave the rats an electric shock. They then gave half of the rats the drug, replayed only one of the tones, and shocked the rats. A day later, the rats were exposed to the tone that was replayed and the untreated rats continued to show signs of fear. The rats that were given the drug were not afraid of the tone because somehow the drug caused them to forget the relation between that specific tone and the electric shock. These results also shows the role of the amygdala in the formation of frightening memories because the rats that were treated with the drug showed decreased communication between the neurons in this region. An increased activity in this area is only seen when fearful memories are formed which led researchers to infer that the memory of the fearful tone was deleted.
A difficult break-up is a minor reason for erasing a memory but imagine if a person could erase the memory of a traumatic experience like sexual abuse or war experience. For many people who go through these experiences, large amounts of therapy sessions and the intake of anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants are needed. These experiences can also affect a person’s daily life and impede them from doing every day things like getting up in the morning. For people who have tried everything from drugs to hypnosis, this drug could me their last and only option. Taking this memory-erasing drug if it is ever approved by the FDA would allow these people to regain control of their lives.
This research is very promising but it is not going to be approved by the FDA anytime soon because a rat’s brain is nothing like the human brain in terms of complexity and the amount of information stored. It is also very hard to pinpoint the exact location of a traumatic memory. If only our brains were an organized filing cabinet, this drug can give individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder an endless amount of possibilities and opportunities.
This article can be found here:
http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2368/news/2007/070305/full/070305-17.html
I also found a website for the “Lacuna Inc.” the fictional memory erasing company from the movie.
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