Posted on 10/22/2008 12:49:24 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22 (HealthDay News) -- It sounds like science fiction, by scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely.
Using a complex genetic approach, U.S. and Chinese researchers believe they have done just that in mice, but the feat is far from being tested on humans.
Study co-author Joe Z. Tsien, co-director of the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, says the "work reveals a molecular mechanism of how [memory deletion] can be done quickly and without doing damage to brain cells."
The finding is published in the Oct. 23 issue of Neuron.
Humans plagued by painful memories have long wished for a way to eject them from the brain. The concept was the premise of the popular 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which two former lovers pay a "memory-erasure" service to expunge the unhappy affair from their minds.
To explore the possibility of safely carving away bits of memory, the study authors first focused on the activity of a common protein found only in the brain, called CaMKII.
In both mice and people, this enzyme is often referred to as the "memory molecule" because of its key role in facilitating brain cell communication -- especially people's ability to learn and retain information.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What?
EEEK!
The conservatism will be purged from our minds in the new Obamunist USSA.
Here will be Obama's top military technological priority if elected.
When will they come up with a way to PLANT memories?.......I’d like some of Angelina Jolie..........
We can remember it for you wholesale!!
Philip K. Dick
(the short story basis for Total Recall)
Wonder if this would benefit anorexics.
There is this one psycho I used to date, can I erase that memory?
All of you who think that the Obamessiah will rush this technology to perfection and use it on us are just full of it, paranoid nuts of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Memories can be far more effectively and cheaply erased with $0.50 of lead.
Every college student already knows about the drug that erases memories.
And it comes in kegs and 1.75 liter bottles.
What happens when some government authority decides that you need to “forget” certain things that you may have thought were real, but which the Bureau of Public Awareness has decided never really happened?
(Forget you ever saw this.)
The memory of my first marriage is long ago wiped out.
Can they try it on my girlfriend? She remembers every single mistake since before we even met....
5 year old piece from Molecular Intervention online mag
Brandeis University
CaMKII, an Enzyme on the Move: Regulation of Temporospatial Localization
http://molinterv.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/full/3/7/386
Warning: pretty medicalese .. :-)
They obviously haven't surfed DU.
Who Moved My Cheese?
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