The Independent
Friday, 24 October 2008
Jim Carrey has memories of a painful relationship wiped from his brain in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Scientists have devised a way of eradicating bad memories in a study that raises the prospect of treating people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which occurs when frightening experiences from the past are recalled, often involuntarily.
Researchers carried out their work on laboratory mice and they emphasise that it may be many years before it can be applied to humans, but the findings provide evidence that it is possible in principle to eliminate bad memories from a person's mind...
...The study, published in the journal Neuron, used genetically modified mice that had been specifically bred to overproduce a neurotransmitter called CaMKII (alpha calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase two), which is involved in memory.
The scientists found that high levels of CaMKII appeared to trigger the rapid erasure of stored memories and that only those memories that were in the process of being retrieved were actually erased, while other ones remained intact.
Dr Tsien said that memories are formed in the brain by the strengthening of the chemical connections between different nerve cells, yet by interfering with the way CaMKII works in the brain it is in effective possible to lose a memory...
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-secret-of-achieving-a-spotless-mind-971483.html
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