If you could erase the worst memory of your life, would you? Scientists are working on a pill

Nationalpost.com Canada ^ | Sharon Kirkey October 31, 2019 8:07 PM EDT Last Updated November 1, 2019 11:19 AM EDT

[Red Badger]

Researchers are working on ways to edit memories — to make the intolerable bearable — by, say, blocking the synaptic changes needed for a memory to solidify ==============================================================

The 60 souls that signed on for Dr. Alain Brunet’s memory manipulation study were united by something they would rather not remember. The trauma of betrayal.

For some, it was infidelity and for others, a brutal, unanticipated abandonment. “It was like, ‘I’m leaving you. Goodbye,” the McGill University associate professor of psychiatry says.

In cold, clinical terms, his patients were suffering from an “adjustment disorder” due to the termination (not of their choosing) of a romantic relationship. The goal of Brunet and other researchers is to help people like this — the scorned, the betrayed, the traumatized — lose their total recall. To deliberately forget.

Over four to six sessions, volunteers read aloud from a typed script they had composed themselves — a first-person account of their breakup, with as many emotional details as possible — while under the influence of propranolol, a common and inexpensive blood pressure pill. The idea was to purposely reactivate the memory and bring the experience and the stinging emotions it aroused to life again. “How did you feel about that?” they were asked. How do you feel right now? And, most importantly: Has your memory changed since last week?

The investigators had hypothesized that four to six sessions of memory reactivation under propranolol would be sufficient to dramatically blunt the memories associated with their “attachment injury.” Decrease the strength of the memory, Brunet says, and you decrease the strength of the pain.

[wally_bert]

At times I wouldn’t mind getting flashy-thinged.

[penguinhunter]

[Red Badger]

Haven’t Got Time For The Pain
Carly Simon
Produced by Richard Perry
Album Hotcakes

All those crazy nights when I cried myself to sleep
Now melodrama never makes me weep anymore
‘Cause I haven’t got time for the pain
I haven’t got room for the pain
I haven’t the need for the pain
Not since I’ve known you

You showed me how, how to leave myself behind
How to turn down the noise in my mind
Now I haven’t got time for the pain
I haven’t got room for the pain
I haven’t the need for the pain
Not since I’ve known you

Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive
Though that’s just how much it cost to survive in this world
‘Til you showed me how, how to fill my heart with love
How to open up and drink in all that white love
Pouring down from the heaven

I haven’t got time for the pain
I haven’t got room for the pain
I haven’t the need for the pain
Not since I’ve known you

[epluribus_2]

Sounds like it’s chemotherapy for neural network cells. “Probably won’t erase anything else since we’re targeting this here node in your sub-network from 1982...I would’nt worry, this won’t hurt a bit.”

Kinda like trusting Google or Verizon to only delete photos with a certain face on it. Might work, might miss by a bit.

[Red Badger]

If they can ‘erase’, they can ‘record’........................

[Billthedrill]

One of the things about this pill is that you forget you ever took it. Look for example at the number of us who have already forgotten the two Hillary Clinton administrations.

[epluribus_2]

EU (Soros) says, at least for now (ever). You realize we cannot allow the British to simply Brexit.

[epluribus_2]

More fiduciary motivation that there is, ma Boy.

[jonascord]

Define "worst". I've spent a life packing in memories. Most good, some bad. I'm not going to touch any more stoves. I don't remember the ear infection I had when I was 3, but I DO remember the shot I got for it, and how I screamed and wrestled with my father to avoid it.

These guys want to test mind control. How long until they can create a pill that will confirm that we have always been at war with EastAsia?

[max americana]

Ah yes.

[21twelve]

The first thing I thought of was the loss of memory of the Jews after they had crossed over into the desert.

“Why did you bring us out here to die!? At least we had food and water in Egypt!!”

[SuperLuminal]

It would be only a matter of time before the government education indoctrination-asylums started giving the inmates those pills so students wouldn't have to go through life triggered by evil concepts such as

• patriotism,
• self-reliance,
• gender,
• belief in God,
• the former Constitution, and,
• anything else that their birth parents might have erroneously taught them...

[GulfMan]

No, I would not take the pill. Those times where I was dashed upon the jagged rocks of never ending despair are very important to remember.

[bgill]

I want to remember the good and the bad. What I want is to go back and remember to take the other fork in the road.

[Responsibility2nd]

The problem with this is that you may forget your biggest mistake but others will not.

_________________________________________

Or worse - you’ll make that big mistake again.

[Haiku Guy]

If I had an extraordinary trauma, like cutting off my own hand with a chainsaw, I might choose to eliminate that memory.

But for everything else, your experiences are what make you who you are. Why would I want to eliminate the memory of a betrayal? Lessons learned, and all that.

[fhayek]

Hillary must have volunteered for clinical tests. Seems like she can't remember anything even remotely nefarious...

[phs3]

I remember an original Star Trek episode where a guy was erasing everyone’s greatest regret. What could go wrong?

[Red Badger]

If I had an extraordinary trauma, like cutting off my own hand with a chainsaw, I might choose to eliminate that memory.

But then you would look down at your stump and say, "How in hell did that happen?".........................

[simpson96]

Yeah, that’ll end well. Sheesh.