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Another Way To Erase Memories
amigoro writes "Neuroscientists have discovered that long-term memories are not etched in a stable form, like a 'clay tablet,' as once thought. The process is much more dynamic, involving a miniature molecular machine that must run constantly to keep memories going. Jamming the machine briefly can erase long-term memories." A few months back we discussed a similar removal of rat memories by a different method.
Erasing traumatic events is not helpful. Learning to accept and cope with a past traumatic event is. People that run and hide aren't people that we need around, we already have too many of them without the advent of memory wipes.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
So your memories are a function of how many molecules you can juggle. But you are more than your memories. Even if I couldn't remember things that happened to me beyond a day ago, I would still have opinions and feelings about situations that occur each day. I wouldn't have specific memories to tie to current events, but I would still avoid some situations and be drawn to others.
Which leads me to wonder, where that "you" is stored and if that storage is "permanent" or easily disrupted. Is my knowledge of mathematics a "memory"? What about my general disposition? Can someone make me drop the "Don't murder people" ball and disrupt my a moral imperatives? That one happens pretty often, actually.
There's no permanence. Just an ever-changing approximation of whatever you envision yourself to be.I'm going to have to disagree with you here. There are some cases where "accepting and coping" isn't an option. And I'm not talking about an in "Eternal Sunshine"-my-girlfriend-broke-up-with-me-and-I'm-r eally-sad type of way. I'm talking about cases where, because of bugs in the fear machinery, people's brains are in an error state that "coping with" can't reverse. Just as cells have normal parameters for homeostasis in which everything functions correctly, so do mental processes. In severe cases, we're not talking about just the psyschological realm. We're talking about gene transcription, protein levels, etc, that are outside of their normal boundaries, and that type of problem isn't easily (or even not so easily) helped by cognitive therapy and coping alone.
If memory is (as the article says):
In other words, long-term memory is not a one-time inscription on the nerve network, but an ongoing process which the brain must continuously fuel and maintain
Crazy idea, the memories I've trusted as being relatively permanent are actually only a few weeks old, or months, but much younger then the experiences they describe -at a molecular level. It's clear that we have limited conscious control over them, bad memories affect people in a number of documented ways. However ignoring the content the memories are just molecules that we can monkey with. My question is: How many other parts or functions in our body are not permanent but maintained with similar molecular functions - scar tissue? Health issues? Just as the body maintains memories, good or bad, does it maintain other things good or bad? Can the body forget to be sick? forget to be Crazy? Could we 'forget' cancer - (molecularly give the cues for the cells not to reproduce or be maintained) -and I know "cure for cancer" is crazy talk - however I love the idea of hacking the molecular mechanisms of the body in a way more clever then massive powersurges of cell destroying drugs and radiation.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
The underlying assumption that these effects have some significant correlation to long-term memory in humans is questionable. Rats are fantastic for testing physiological responses to drugs, as most the involved systems operate similarly. Low level CNS stuff, which may be involved here, is good too. But things touching on consciousness -- like conscious memory, as opposed to conditioned reactions, should not be assumed to have any correlation to experiments like these.
Yes, obviously rape victims should accept this fact and get on with life.
I can accept we have far too many people with a victim mentality; I can accept that this has a large potential for abuse. I can't say that someone who can't live a normal life because of a traumatic event in the past shouldn't get treatment. Yes it will be a very ethically complex drug even if it worked perfectly, but to deny all uses of the drug? I imagine it might also have some uses in military personel, but... yes, it's a very slippery slope.
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
Are you a psychologist? Do you know about current treatments and their success rates? Furthermore, who are you to say that we don't want others buying a treatment that might help relieve their suffering? Some types of trauma can not be 'accepted and coped with.'
What a load of authoritarian claptrap. You sound like the type of person who has had some small measure of success dealing with their own minor past hurts and now has THE ONE TRUE ANSWER for every human being on the planet. Good luck with that.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We're not saying "get over it", but it really can't be healthy to just be able to wipe out anything painful in your life any time you like.
Some people would probably end up blanking out huge portions of their lives. You might also lose the ability to make smart choices. If you wiped your memory, you might not know to be cautious in certain situations (or not not trust specific people). As shitty as they can be, your experiences are what you learn from. (Yeah, I know, I sound like Kirk.) Just blanking them out can't be any more healthy than having to live with them.
Watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind some time. Yes, it's fiction, but it does try to look at the consequences of being able to do such things.
And for me (though I could be just paranoid about such things) I'm not really willing to let someone muck about in my brain unless it's for life-saving purposes. I'd rather deal with whatever reality throws me than let someone fuck around with my neurons. They're gonna need a couple of decades to give me any confidence in this procedure -- wipe out enough neurons, and you spend your days with colouring books and drooling on yourself.
There might be some cases where this might be a treatment of last resort. But, I think there's a fairly high threshold of acceptability/safety which needs to be addressed.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I didn't read the post you're responding to, but why should a man need to be a psychologist to talk about the mind? No one's asking him for therapy.
*glances at post in question*
Okay, so he could be a lot more tactful, or could use... well, could explain any reasoning he's using there. But still, more flies with honey.
A degree isn't everything.
The fact that human brains chilled to inactivity maintain their memory, also hints that frozen brains may very well be recoverable in the future. It's said to be an old myth that freezing brains causes ice crystals to shred the brain cells.
The brain is like a large organic blob of dynamic ram that works on the principle similar to a feedback loop to keep the data fresh.. You block off any part of it, or overload it, and you lose data.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There is no reason to believe that all memories work the same way. Taste and smell aversion, in particular, are so different from other kinds of memories that there's a good chance that they work differently too.
I've been following Alcor for years now, always love reading their news letter informing of new changes and improvements to cryonics and how many people are now under cryostasis. Indeed I am thinking of getting this done, the price is certainly worth it.. But now I worry, if the research is true then would you come out hundreds of years in the future not knowing who you were? Would you come out as if you were a new-born? Learning difficulties wouldn't be a problem in the future due to chip/memory implementations (When they are able to bring back a person from cryostasis, I'm almost certain this tech would be waiting), but having no recollection of who you were brings up a sore spot. Perhaps it's an advantage though? Being that all your friends and family would have been dead for centuries, you wouldn't have that longing of seeing them again!
The protein in question here is PKMzeta, which from the name I'd think is a protein kinase. Apparently it's a fragment of the enzyme Protein Kinase C-zeta, and it is crucial for its constituvely active functioning, which means that it will continuously function.
As far as I recall, there's heaps of drugs that are capable of interfering with constitutively active phosphorylation so as to inhibit or enhance function. In the case of cancer, drugs that inhibit constitutive phosphorylation ie. the use of imitanib in chronic myeloid leukaemia, have enormous utility. But what about one that enhances such functions? What about having a drug that is capable of engaging with the active site of the enzyme as a means of enhancing its function and form new memories? It'll be decades before such drugs can have clinical use, but their function as academic drugs is huge. From their use, we can learn about:
1) How long-term memories are formed and destroyed
2) How physiological and pathological processes influence these
3) The neurochemical and neuroanatomical basis of memory formation
And even then, if we wanted to make a useful drug out of this, a drug to remember as opposed to forgetting, it is a matter of molecular pharmacology, which is more up to science than serendipity. Engineering a drug to be an agonist, or antagonist thereof, has some curious applications. I may not be a pharmacologist, but from studying I've found that having a drug that agonizes or antagonizes the enzymatic or receptor machinery is contingent upon having a drug that:
1) Can fit into the active site(s) of the protein
2) Stimulate it or inhibit it thereof by altering the chemistry of the enzyme, hence enhancing function
We have here, a drug that can fit into the active site of this protein. We could quite well re-engineer it to have enhanced activity, or a longer half-life. Heck, if we wanted to, we could synthesize it and inject bucketloads into mice and see if they develop superb long-term memories. Think of the applications as an adjunct therapy for dementia...think about how mutations in this protein could be responsible for the memory savants we see today.
Of course, we're going out of our depth here. PKM-zeta seems to be well studied in mouse models, I haven't found much info on this in humans.