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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: poinq

Just think, you might get treated for one thing, a bad memory, and wind up getting a whole new set!.....................


41 posted on 02/10/2016 10:55:42 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: FES0844

“2 Bibles?”

The top one is a Koran.


42 posted on 02/10/2016 10:57:01 AM PST by READINABLUESTATE ("If guns cause crime, there must be something wrong with mine." -Ted Nugent)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

An Out of body experience?.......................


43 posted on 02/10/2016 10:57:07 AM PST by Red Badger (READ MY LIPS: NO MORE BUSHES!...............)
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To: Red Badger

Unfortunately for the writer of the stupid article that is not true. The human mind does not store memories like a computer. Everything in the human mind is holistic. A memory is not in just one place. A memory includes multiple associations with other memories. It is impossible to wipe them all out.


44 posted on 02/10/2016 10:58:17 AM PST by I want the USA back (The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. Orwell.)
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To: Red Badger

Sounds like buying premature-senility. I think I’ll wait for nature to take its course.


45 posted on 02/10/2016 10:58:59 AM PST by Cementjungle
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To: Red Badger

“Thanks to science, you can soon wipe out your worst memories”

Or someone else’s.


46 posted on 02/10/2016 11:00:06 AM PST by Slambat
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To: Red Badger

Election Day-——2008.

Poof !

Gone.

.


47 posted on 02/10/2016 11:01:44 AM PST by Mears
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To: Red Badger
What? Wake up on Mars again with people trying to kill me and a GPS tracker shoved up my nose?

NO THANKS!!


48 posted on 02/10/2016 11:04:31 AM PST by Delta 21 (Patiently waiting for the jack booted kick at my door.)
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To: 556x45

Versed


49 posted on 02/10/2016 11:09:05 AM PST by MarMema
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To: Celtic Conservative

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

No that I never intend to grow up, I just never want to be a ‘maturity snob’.


50 posted on 02/10/2016 11:21:44 AM PST by equaviator (There's nothing like the universe to bring you down to earth.)
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To: Red Badger

51 posted on 02/10/2016 11:23:31 AM PST by stormer
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To: Red Badger

No, I was still on the table watching it, but somewhere I lost some time.


52 posted on 02/10/2016 11:24:52 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Red Badger

So they’re not really erasing the memory, just the bad emotions associated with it. That makes more sense, since the human mind has so many redundancies built in that I would expect it to be functionally impossible to actually erase the memory of something, particularly something impactful.


53 posted on 02/10/2016 11:26:38 AM PST by Little Pig
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To: Red Badger
Thanks to science, you can soon wipe out your worst memories

What could possibly go wrong?


54 posted on 02/10/2016 11:31:00 AM PST by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
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To: Red Badger

I don’t want to wipe out my worst memories, and I don’t want others to do so. We need to remember these eight terrible years so that voters will never repeat the errors they made in 2008 and again in 2012.


55 posted on 02/10/2016 11:38:37 AM PST by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Red Badger

I’ve met Eric Kandel several times, have heard him lecture often and have read his books. While he is good on the biochemistry and neuroscience, he has no idea how memories are actually stored, or even where they are stored. The same is true of Joseph LeDoux of NYU who wrote several textbooks on memory storage. They all think that memories are stored in the synapses. Memories are no more stored in the brain than the music you hear coming from a radio is stored in the radio.

I’ve studied this topic for over 30 years and have discovered exactly where memories are stored, how they are processed, and how they are retrieved. I can prove it as I read the stored memories of total strangers and remove the emotional trauma attached to the stored memory in a few seconds. I’ve done this many times, even in front of groups as a demonstration.

Memories are stored in the fields that surround the physical body and are anchored in the body. Most physical tension is caused by the body creating defense mechanisms to block the retrieval of painful memories. For example, compressed spinal nerves are usually caused by the tense muscles putting a tourniquet hold on the cell body head of the afferent spinal neuron in the dorsal root ganglion in order to block input to the CNS.

I take total strangers and read their memories from conception forward in their life. I can tell a 70 year old person what their mother thought of their father when they were in their mother’s womb. Yes, memories start at conception. Actually before that, but that’s another topic I don’t want to address. I work a lot with inter-generational trauma transferred from mother to child in the womb.

Very often when I touch these memories it knocks the person off their feet even though I am standing 15 feet away and the person has their eyes closed and I don’t physically say anything or touch the person.

Incidently, these stored memories continue to exist even when the person dies and has no physical body.


56 posted on 02/10/2016 11:55:18 AM PST by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: taxcontrol

Drugs do not heal the stored memories. They only block the storage or retrieval while the person is on them.

I do a demonstration to show the power of prayer and how it changes consciousness. I’ve done this several times both in divinity school lectures and with neuroscientists. If a person is on anti-depressants they do not have the ability to project their prayer. It’s like taking the knob off a radio and saying that is the only station you get. You can’t go down in the dumps nor can you tune upward.


57 posted on 02/10/2016 12:03:39 PM PST by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: V_TWIN
just because you can do it doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea

If they can do this then what's to stop our government from making the populace more pliable and amenable by removing ANY memories. This is dangerous stuff.

58 posted on 02/10/2016 12:04:25 PM PST by HOYA97 (twitter @hoya97)
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To: Red Badger
Thanks to science, you can soon wipe out your worst memories

Technically speaking, brewing alcohol involves science...

59 posted on 02/10/2016 12:09:01 PM PST by JRios1968 (I'm guttery and trashy, with a hint of lemon. - Laz)
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To: Red Badger

Midazolam, marketed under the trade names Versed among others, is one medication used for anesthesia, procedural sedation, trouble sleeping, and severe agitation. It works by making people sleepy, decreasing anxiety, and causing a loss of ability to create new memories.


60 posted on 02/10/2016 12:09:36 PM PST by tired&retired (Blessings)
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