New Drug Erases Memory

According to livescience, a new memory drug being researched at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal) allows psychiatrist to block the biochemical pathways allowing a memory to be recalled.

Victims of traumatic events like rape were treated to the drug propanolol coupled with therapy design to tone down the memories of the victims. They were all asked to recount their traumatic experiences and half of them were given the new drug and a week later they found out that those given the new drug were able to recount their sad experiences with less stress.

A parallel research carried out on rats at the New York University enabled the scientists to remove a specific memory while keeping the rest of it intact. It is called U0126, and it was injected to rats trained by the team of Professor Joseph Ledoux to associate a couple of musical tones to an electric shock thus conditioning the rats to brace themselves for shock every time they hear it. Like the one carried out by researchers at Harvard and Mcgill University to rape victims, the researchers here also administered the drug to half of the rats when they play one of the tones.

The results were very similar to that conducted by the Harvard and McGill researchers. They too found out that the rats no longer brace themselves for the first tone where they were given the drug but still braced themselves when hearing the second tone clearly giving the conclusion that the memory being erased was very specific, according to livescience.

Lovers of science fiction might associate these findings with popularized concepts of banishing unwanted memories as displayed by actors Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey with Kate going to a fictional medical company "Laguna Inc" to have her memory of them erased since they have had a falling out, with Carrey's character also opting for the said medical procedure. It was shown humorously though on the film the process of electrocuting the person while a memento was being shown to them, which naturally didn't work of course.