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.â€
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.â€
“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.â€
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 Âneuroscientist 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 Âpropanolol 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 ...
2 Bibles?
Might this be a treatment for PTSD? Remove the memories that are causing the greatest stress?
Yes, that’s what they are looking into.................
That’s what we will be in Heaven.....................
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
How about the last eight years?
NO! NEVER FORGET! ELSE WE’D BE LIKE GROUNDHOG DAY!....................
-2 Bibles?-
Ones a Koran no doubt, probably the one on top of course.
And now South Carolina is about to live the nightmare.
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.
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!..............
If you wanted to be a perpetual child, you’d be a liberal.
CC
Never forget, else they will repeat.........................
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?
yeah, I don’t get that one.
Oh, this can’t go wrong.
A couple of jiggers of ‘single malt’ usually does it for me.
Some ‘bad memories’ are useful..........................
I find a nice bottle of Jameson works for me...
Only a couple? Would take nearly a whole bottle for me............................
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.