Erasing Bad Memories May Soon Be Possible
Using state of the art laser and gas techniques, scientists working with mice make stunning breakthroughs in turning bad memories into better ones
Memories are a complex combination of objective information—the color of a car, the size of a building—and less tangible emotional feelings, like fear, anxiety, joy, or satisfaction. But to scientists, memories are nothing more than a series of chemical and physical changes, the firing of a nerve here, which sends electrochemical impulses to another nerve there, which together encode everything that we associate with a memory.
But exactly what do those changes look like? And is it possible to override them? In a milestone paper published in the journal Nature, scientists may have provided some answers, explaining how emotional baggage gets attached to memories, and how that can be manipulated to quite literally turn bad memories good. In separate work appearing in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers say that a commonly used anesthetic gas, xenon, if administered at exactly the right moment, can also strip the painful and negative feelings associated with a traumatic memory, essentially neutralizing it.
The findings from both groups come from mouse studies, but the two teams are confident that the results will further efforts to understand and find new ways to treat depression and post traumatic stress disorder in people.
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/erasing-bad-memories-may-soon-be-possible
Using state of the art laser and gas techniques, scientists working with mice make stunning breakthroughs in turning bad memories into better ones
Memories are a complex combination of objective information—the color of a car, the size of a building—and less tangible emotional feelings, like fear, anxiety, joy, or satisfaction. But to scientists, memories are nothing more than a series of chemical and physical changes, the firing of a nerve here, which sends electrochemical impulses to another nerve there, which together encode everything that we associate with a memory.
But exactly what do those changes look like? And is it possible to override them? In a milestone paper published in the journal Nature, scientists may have provided some answers, explaining how emotional baggage gets attached to memories, and how that can be manipulated to quite literally turn bad memories good. In separate work appearing in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers say that a commonly used anesthetic gas, xenon, if administered at exactly the right moment, can also strip the painful and negative feelings associated with a traumatic memory, essentially neutralizing it.
The findings from both groups come from mouse studies, but the two teams are confident that the results will further efforts to understand and find new ways to treat depression and post traumatic stress disorder in people.
http://news.msn.com/science-technology/erasing-bad-memories-may-soon-be-possible