In mice, a similar technique has been used to make mice 'forget' that a particular sound was associated with an electric shock, while leaving other memories intact. Those that were given the drug didn't forget the experience, but a week later they were able to recount it with much less stress than they originally had. The participants were given either propranolol or a placebo each day for 10 days, and were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event. The same drug was also tested back in 2007 on victims of a past trauma. Within three months, many of them felt comfortable holding the spider, and their fear hadn't come back even after a year. The results were pretty incredible - while the group given the placebo and those given propranolol without being exposed to a spider showed no change in their fear levels, arachnophobes who were shown the spider and given the drug were able to touch the tarantula within days. Over the next few months, the groups were all presented with another tarantula and their fear response was measured. The third group was simply given propranolol without being shown a spider, to rule out the possibility that the drug on its own was responsible for reducing their fear. Two of these groups were shown a tarantula in a glass jar to trigger their fearful memories of spiders, and were then either given propranolol or a placebo. To figure this out, the team took three groups of arachnophobes. Numerous studies have now shown that by blocking a chemical called norepinephrine - which is involved in the fight or flight response and is responsible for triggering symptoms such as sweaty palms and a racing heart - researchers can 'dampen' traumatic memories, and stop them being associated with negative emotions.įor example, at the end of last year, researchers from the Netherlands demonstrated they could take away arachnophobes' fear of spiders by using a drug called propranolol to block norepinephrine. "When the memory is recalled, however, it becomes molten again and so can be altered before it once more resets." "The research suggests memories can be manipulated because they act as if made from glass, existing in a molten state as they are being created, before turning solid," Richard Gray explains for The Telegraph. The reconsolidation process is so important, because it's a point at which scientists can step in and 'hack' our memories. Eventually just the thought of a bike could be enough to make you terrified. Alternatively, most of us have had the experience of a once-traumatic memory becoming laughable years later. This process is known as reconsolidation, and it explains why our memories can sometimes change slightly over time - for example, if you fell off your bike, each time you remember it and get upset about it, you're restrengthening the connections between that memory and emotions such as fear and sadness. In fact, every time we revisit a memory, that memory becomes malleable again, and is reset stronger and more vividly than before. But what many people don't realise is that those long-term memories aren't stable. Once that happens, a memory is stored in your mind, and for most of us, it'll stay there as long as we occasionally reflect upon it or revisit it. To explain it simply, a memory is formed when proteins stimulate our brains cells to grow and form new connections - literally rewiring our minds' circuitry. In the past, scientists used to think that memories were stored in one specific spot, like a neurological file cabinet, but they've since realised that every single memory we have is locked up in connections across the brain. So how do you go about deleting a memory? To understand that, you need to understand how memories form and are kept alive in our brains in the first place. But thanks to the advances in neurological scanning technology over the past few decades, we're now closer than you might realise to making these technologies (or something similar) a reality. If it all sounds a little science fiction, that's because it is - films such as Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind and Total Recall have long toyed with the idea of altering our memories. And drugs that rewire our brains to forget the bad parts are already on the horizon, as PBS documentary Memory Hackershighlighted over the weekend.
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In fact, researchers have now figured out how to delete, change, and even implant memories - not just in animals, but in human subjects.
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