Bad Memory? Take a Pill!

[3113]

Full story here:

What if you could take a pill and erase painful memories? Most of us would probably choose not to lose parts of our past, but for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, such a pill might bring welcome relief. In a study that sounds very much like a scene from the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” researchers have shown that the right medication might actually help rub out wrenching remembrances.

For the new study, researchers rounded up 33 university students and asked them to watch a video presentation...[that] is tough to sit through and tends to cause viewers emotional distress, explains the study’s lead author Marie-France Marin, a doctoral student at The Center for Studies on Human Stress at the University of Montreal. “It’s not fun to watch,” she says. “It induces a lot of emotion.” ...Afterwards, she and her colleagues collected saliva samples to measure levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.....Three days later, the study volunteers were brought back in to the lab. Some were given a placebo, while the rest were given one of two doses of a drug that knocks back the amount of cortisol coursing through the body.

The theory is that cortisol is somehow involved in preserving memories, especially emotionally charged ones, Marin explains. Cut back on cortisol and maybe you’ll be able to mess with a memory -- even after it’s already been created and stashed away in the brain.When Marin asked the volunteers to try to recall the video presentation, those who were given the cortisol-damping drug had a harder time recalling the more wrenching details. The higher the dose, the harder it was for them to remember. Four days later the volunteers were asked to once again come back to the lab. Surprisingly, the drug’s impact on memory was still apparent: volunteers who took it still had trouble recalling the emotionally charged scenes.

Might this be the cure for those who read Loving Wives?

 

[Verdad]

In a study that sounds very much like a scene from the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” researchers have shown that the right medication might actually help rub out wrenching remembrances.

If the pill had been available, I wouldn’t recognize this reference.

 

[estragon]

How long have you had these memory lapses? I can't remember.

 

[rgraham666]

They may be horrible memories, but they're mine. So some nutbar doctor with a God complex can't have them.

 

[Pure]

comments

interesting material 3113, esp. as regards the permanent impact of the intervention, which suggests alteration in structure, at least at some level. IOW, it's not as if the volunteers got drunk and had trouble reciting a poem they'd recently learned--but recovered.

it should be pointed out that there are related findings for several drugs. some affect the generation of neurons; i'm thinking of the SSRIs in particular, such as Prozac (though i have no direct personal experience of them). the 'cure' --where it happens--may be through alteration of brain(neuronal) structures. here's a bit of the research, the evidence, and the reasoning.

of course our memories make us who we are; but where a person lives with a recurring nightmare from the past, he or she MIGHT be happy if it faded.

http://www.biopsychiatry.com/newbraincell/index.html

Source: American Scientist
Date: July-August 2000

Depression and the Birth and Death of Brain Cells

[...]
Stimulation from Serotonin

As mentioned above, prescription drugs that increase serotonergic neurotransmission are currently the most common and most effective treatment for depression. Furthermore, serotonin stimulates cell division in a variety of peripheral tissues and triggers neurogenesis in the central nervous system during development. It also plays an important role in neuronal and synaptic plasticity. That evidence made serotonin worthy of further study.

Recently, one of us (Jacobs) and his colleagues used adult rats to study the effect of d,l-fenfluramine, a drug that releases serotonin throughout the central nervous system. In those studies, systemic administration of that drug increased cell division two- to threefold in the dentate gyrus. Moreover, an antagonist for a specific serotonin receptor--called 5-HT1A (serotonin is also known by the name 5-hydroxytryptamine, or 5-HT for short)--completely blocked this effect of d,l-fenfluramine. [...]

The clinical benefit of drugs that increase serotonergic neurotransmission encouraged one of the authors (Jacobs) to test fluoxetine (Prozac), which increases brain levels of circulating serotonin by inhibiting it from being taken back into neurons that release it. We gave adult rats a three-week, systemic treatment of fluoxetine and found an approximately 70-percent increase in the number of cells produced in the dentate gyrus. Ronald Duman’s group at Yale University confirmed and extended that result. They found that fluoxetine, antidepressants acting preferentially on norepinephrine and chronic electroconvulsive shock all increased cell proliferation in a rat’s dentate gyrus.

 

[TE999]

I'm guessin' those students in the study had to watch a Jerry Lewis movie...if anything will cause emotional stress is a goofball screaming "Layydee!"

 

[punkreader]

My thoughts

If it would work, oh I'd love to! Here's the sad thing: people have suggested this to me. Without knowing what my memories are, or what taking "any old pill - if you take enough" (it's what they said) would do to me. Uh, no thank you. I like my body, defective and crappy as it is, I'd prefer it at least stay functional. Granted, the people that said that, who also suggested that we "make up issues to deal with problems" (Wait...what?) are crazy, holy-roller family members of mine. With huge debt problems and three fucked-up kids (as in, conning, alcoholic, drug-addicted kids, none of whom have finished college).

However, if such a thing worked, I might be persuaded to give it a try. Might. As much pain as some of my memories might cause me, the experiences have taught me lessons about life, and about what I don't want to be as a person. And, besides, I've blocked out the worst (read: majority) on my own anyway, so screw any pills - I take enough already! :cattails: Largely for pain and keeping myself alive, though, not psychological issues. :frog: