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Thanks to science, you can soon wipe out your worst memories
nypost.com ^ | February 10, 2016 | 3:29am | By Reed Tucker

Posted on 02/10/2016 10:38:19 AM PST by Red Badger

Imagine being able to erase your most traumatic memories. For a soldier, that would mean no longer being haunted by images from the battlefield. For a movie critic, no longer recalling having seen “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.”

It’s just one of the fascinating peeks into the mystery of the human mind chronicled on “Memory Hackers,” airing Wednesday at 9 p.m. on PBS’ “Nova.”

“Memory is an inherently interesting thing,” the show’s writer, director and producer, Michael Bicks, tells The Post. “You think you know what it is, but when you think about it, you realize that you don’t.”

Many of us assume that memory is like a faithful recording of our lives stored in our brains, persistent and unchanging.

Shockingly, that’s not the case. Researchers have discovered that memory is changeable. The act of recalling something alters it.

Forming memories actually causes a physical change in the brain — a seismic discovery made by Nobel Prize-winning ­neuroscientist Eric Kandel of Columbia University. When you create a memory, new synaptic connections grow between neurons in the brain. But each time you call up a memory, it must then be resaved like a file on your computer — and it gets modified in the process.

[SNIP]

Dutch psychology professor Merel Kindt has seemingly found a way to erase the emotional anxiety associated with bad memories without erasing the memories themselves.

Working with arachnophobes, she discovered that subjects who were given a drug called ­propanolol after being exposed to a spider were later able to handle the creatures without fear. The drug is believed to change the way a memory (in this case, terror associated with spiders) is resaved in the brain after being accessed.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Military/Veterans; Science; Sports
KEYWORDS: memories
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

2 Bibles?


21 posted on 02/10/2016 10:47:13 AM PST by FES0844
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To: Red Badger

Might this be a treatment for PTSD? Remove the memories that are causing the greatest stress?


22 posted on 02/10/2016 10:47:37 AM PST by taxcontrol ( The GOPe treats the conservative base like slaves by taking their votes and refuses to pay)
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To: taxcontrol

Yes, that’s what they are looking into.................


23 posted on 02/10/2016 10:48:14 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: PGR88

That’s what we will be in Heaven.....................


24 posted on 02/10/2016 10:49:18 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: dfwgator

Oh, I’m sure your sec and fsu friends will help you to never forget willie boy.

I’ve always contended he was a mole planted by uga to sabotage the program for as long as possible. lol


25 posted on 02/10/2016 10:49:31 AM PST by V_TWIN
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To: Red Badger

How about the last eight years?


26 posted on 02/10/2016 10:49:51 AM PST by longfellow (Bill Maher, the 21st hijacker.)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

NO! NEVER FORGET! ELSE WE’D BE LIKE GROUNDHOG DAY!....................


27 posted on 02/10/2016 10:50:01 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: FES0844

-2 Bibles?-

Ones a Koran no doubt, probably the one on top of course.


28 posted on 02/10/2016 10:50:33 AM PST by V_TWIN
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To: V_TWIN

And now South Carolina is about to live the nightmare.


29 posted on 02/10/2016 10:50:47 AM PST by dfwgator
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To: Red Badger

Perhaps my worst memory is of Election night 1992, when Barbara Boxer narrowly defeated Bruce Herschensohn for the US Senate seat from California. I had worked my heart out for Herschensohn, and had he won, the Senate would have had a true statesman. That memory is only slightly worse than that of Ronald Reagan’s defeat at the 1976 Republican National Convention.

But I don’t want to dispose of such memories—they motivate me to keep fighting for the conservative cause.


30 posted on 02/10/2016 10:50:51 AM PST by Fiji Hill
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To: 556x45

After my last colonoscopy, they told me that I was saying all kinds of embarrassing stuff when coming out of the anesthesia.................good that i don’t remember any of it!..............


31 posted on 02/10/2016 10:51:28 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: PGR88

If you wanted to be a perpetual child, you’d be a liberal.

CC


32 posted on 02/10/2016 10:51:49 AM PST by Celtic Conservative (CC: purveyor of cryptic, snarky posts since December, 2000..)
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To: longfellow

Never forget, else they will repeat.........................


33 posted on 02/10/2016 10:52:09 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: Red Badger

It may already be here. Ten years ago I went into the hospital to have a stent put in a heart artery. I was awake the entire time and watched the procedure on a TV in there.

After it was done, they said I did well and was asleep during the operation and snoring like a baby. When I said I was awake the entire time they informed me they had given me an amnesia drug to forget.
So was I awake or asleep?


34 posted on 02/10/2016 10:52:23 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: dfwgator

yeah, I don’t get that one.


35 posted on 02/10/2016 10:52:26 AM PST by V_TWIN
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To: Red Badger

Oh, this can’t go wrong.


36 posted on 02/10/2016 10:52:41 AM PST by poinq
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To: Red Badger

A couple of jiggers of ‘single malt’ usually does it for me.


37 posted on 02/10/2016 10:52:46 AM PST by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: Fiji Hill

Some ‘bad memories’ are useful..........................


38 posted on 02/10/2016 10:53:31 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: Red Badger

I find a nice bottle of Jameson works for me...


39 posted on 02/10/2016 10:54:05 AM PST by Hatteras
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To: Don Corleone

Only a couple? Would take nearly a whole bottle for me............................


40 posted on 02/10/2016 10:54:34 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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