In the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star in the roles of recently separated lovers Joel and Clementine, who both undergo a radical medical procedure to have the painful memories of their relationship erased. The ability to erase memories is no longer restricted to Hollywood script-writers: in an advance online publication in Nature Neuroscience, a group of researchers at New York University’s Center for Neural Science, led by Joseph LeDoux, report that they have succeeded in preventing the transfer of a single fearful memory from short-term to long-term storage, while leaving another memory, which was encoded at the same time, intact.
LeDoux’s team trained rats to fear musical tones by giving them electric shocks while they heard the tones. This is called classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning: by associating the musical tones with electric shocks, the rats learn to expect an electric shock whenever they hear the tones. Fear behaviour was assessed by the extent to which the rats freeze when they hear the tones associated with the electric shock. Half of the animals were treated with a drug called U0126, which causes limited amnesia. The rats were then played one of the musical tones which they had been conditioned to fear; those treated with U0126 were still under the influence of the drug when they heard the tone.
The rats’ memories of the tones were tested the next day. Whereas the control group remained fearful of both, the animals treated with U0126 no longer displayed any fear behaviour when they heard the tone that had been played to them while under the influence of the drug. Microelectrodes were used to record the electrical activity of neurons in the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure on the medial surface of the temporal lobe). It was found that, in the rats treated with the amnesia drug, there was reduced activity in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala.
The transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage requires reconsolidation. This involves the strengthening of existing synaptic connections, or the formation of new synapses, both of which require the expression of certain genes and the synthesis of their protein products. It is these processes that were disrupted in this study – if the effects of the drug remained during reconsolidation, the memory of the association between the musical tone and the electric shock was erased. The study provides further evidence of the role of the amygdala in the encoding of fearful memories, and could eventually lead to the development of drugs for the treatment of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Reference:
Doyère, V., et al. (2007). Synapse-specific reconsolidation of distinct fear memories in the lateral amygdala. Nature Neurosci. doi:10.1038/nn1871 [Abstract
Related:
- Reconstructive memory: Confabulating the past, simulating the future
- A possible target for memory-enhancing drugs
- The neurobiology of fear
Mo Costandi 
Don’t beleive this crap. They don’t have anything. These stupid scientists have been claiming for over ten years now that they can erase memory but they have not erased a single human memory yet. “Memory reconsolidation” is futile. No matter what they tell you they cannot erase memory by recalling it and then giving someone a pill to take, that is so stupid it is unbeleivable. These researchers are the same idiots who claimed that taking propranolel after a traumatic event will “dim the memory”, I in fact tried propranolel and it did not do anything. So all you people who think memory erasing is unethical, immoral, and blah, blah, blah can save your breath. The researchers are only seeking publicity with their over-exagerrated and far-fetched claims.
Other scientists (check out Suny Downstate Medical erasing memory, Todd Sacktor and Andre Fenton), have made more promising progress by physically erasing memory at the molecular level by inhitibiting a protein which keeps the synaptic stregnthening of the memory nueron, but they apply the molecule to the hippancumpus and I beleive it destroys all memories as they cannot at this point single out a specific memory to inhibit the protein molecule. Memories are so so minute that they cannot even be seen with a microsope so it will be probably decades before they will be able to wipe out a single specific memory, and then, how will they be able to get deep into the brain to target a specific memory? I think that is impossible.
I wonder if they ever do find a way to do this if they could also delete thoughts in the brain, if so there are possibilites that would be able to cure a lot of mental problems such as addictions, OCD, phobias, depression and ptsd as all of these are related to memories and thoughts.
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