Can we, should we, erase bad memories?

In the film Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet use a specialist medical service to obliterate their memories of their relationship. Science fiction? Only for the time being, it seems. The Dutch authors of a recent study in Nature Neuroscience think that they are on track to developing a drug to blunt bad memories. The practical applications are immense. A spotless mind pill could bring relief to millions who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Here’s what the researchers found. When 60 student volunteers saw pictures of spiders they received a mild electric shock, enough to develop a fear response. Then half of them received the beta-blocker propranolol, a drug used to steady the heartbeat; the control group only a placebo. The students who received propanolol were able to look at the spiders without fear. In other words, their emotional memory had been erased, but not the "declarative memory" of the spider images themselves.

This is consistent with previous research which suggests that emotional memory is controlled by the amygdala in the brain and declarative memory by the hippocampus. Perhaps propanolol disrupts protein synthesis in the amygdala, the researchers hypothesised. (Mercatornet's news)