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Researchers Use Electroconvulsive Therapy To Disrupt Recall of Nasty Events
ananyo writes "In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, unhappy lovers undergo an experimental brain treatment to erase all memories of each other from their minds. No such fix exists for real-life couples, but researchers report in Nature Neuroscience that a targeted medical intervention helps to reduce specific negative memories in patients who are depressed. The technique, called electroconvulsive (ECT) or electroshock therapy, induces seizures by passing current into the brain through electrode pads placed on the scalp. Despite its sometimes negative reputation, ECT is an effective last-resort treatment for severe depression, and is used today in combination with anaesthesia and muscle relaxants. Marijn Kroes, a neuroscientist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and his colleagues found that by strategically timing ECT bursts, they could target and disrupt patients' memory of a disturbing episode."
The problem is that this therapy tends to erase all memories. It is a very blunt instrument, just slightly better than a lobotomy.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I can understand that something like this would be a boon to veterans with PTSD or survivors of rape or other violent episodes. However, I wonder if this will eventually get more widespread and become used for trivial things, like removing memories of a bad breakup or other parts of life which might be painful, but tolerable. It has been noted here and there before that bouts of depression have made people more artistically productive, but this can disappear with medication...if we likewise remove the negative memories, are we going to start missing heuristics that make us work to improve our lives?
"Researchers Use Electroconvulsive Therapy To Disrupt Recall of Nasty Events"
That therapy is so nasty, that all other nasty events in the past are dimmed in comparison.
Which worked so well after WWII. But don't worry. This time we know what we're doing. Really. Trust us. At least we're not using drugs. Drugs are bad mkay?
Seems rather dangerous to me.
No sir I dont like it.
"Not only was the ECT ineffective, it was incredibly damaging to my cognitive functioning and memory. But sometimes it's hard to be sure of yourself when everyone 'credible' — scientists, ECT docs, researchers — are telling you that your reality isn't real. How many times have I been told my memory loss wasn't due to ECT but to depression? How many times have I been told that, like a lot of other consumers, I must be perceiving this incorrectly? How many times have people told me that my feelings of trauma related to the ECT are misplaced and unusual? It's as if I was raped and people kept telling me not to be upset—that it wasn't that bad."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy#Individual_negative_accounts
I had a severe clinical depression and was hospitalized for a while. I shared a room with a guy who was undergoing ECT and he was a complete zombie.
To the doctors complete surprise I declined the ECT offer. They didn't quite understand my point, that I was the mad scientist. Not them.
Newspapers and magazines are dying. They cost too much these days.
rewriting history since 2109
When there is a method that can be used in a much more targeted fashion?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130910140941.htm
In the near future, it could be as simple as take a pill, interview an analyst about your most disturbing memories and be free of them. The trick is not to recall anything you don't want to forget before the pill wears off.
It probably can be used to change people behaviour and even (political) thinking. Just don't use it to make people hate Ludwig van music.
A similar study showed that ECT was 73.4% effective in removing memories regarding previous health insurance policies .
I see tea parties coming up, instead of those botox parties. Having a fun afternoon and getting rid of all those nasty evolution theories in your head.
... nothing was working to turn her severe depression. Multiple suicide attempts. ECT literally saved her life.
Yes, it had sucky side effects. But she is alive. And a lot happier now.
So rape and PTSD are just learning experiences?
There is a difference between remembering bad things to learn from them and turning them into something pathological.
To give you an example, a normal person would maybe walk across the road when the traffic light shows red and gets almost run over by a car. He will learn that it's not a smart thing to cross the road when the traffic light shows red.
The pathological "lesson" from it would be that it is dangerous to cross the road. These people do not learn from the experience in the normal sense. They do of course get the message that they should heed the traffic light, but they go way overboard with it. Not only do they blame themselves for everything that they did wrong, but for everything that did GO wrong. That the traffic light was red, that the driver did not watch out, and that's just the start. Things get added to the memory to make the experience even worse over time.
That's not really a healthy learning experience. In the end, their lesson is that it's probably better if they don't cross roads. Or maybe even better that they don't leave the house. In the most extreme form not even for their safety but to keep others from harm. After all, the driver that kills them could get hurt or he could have to deal with the guilt of killing someone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.