Neuroscientists in Brooklyn successfully erase memories with drugs
By Laura June 
posted April 8th 2009 6:47PM
posted April 8th 2009 6:47PM
posted April 8th 2009 6:47PM
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Maybe he mysteriously found himself with one of those bottles in hand and came up with that deduction.
I'm going to take this the day after apple launches so I can forget the barrage of fanboy blog posts.
Apple launched in the 80s.
Oops, I suppose I should have preceded that with a "sit yourself down" or "take one now". Maybe the smell of your trolling made me forget. Maybe you can market it as a drug.
Thanks for posting the first apple comment on a non apple related post, mights as well as put "First" as a comment. Same thing, useless.
You might need to take it daily up until they're next release. Then, you are probably better pulling a pistol out of your glove box.
The Manchurian Candidate, but this time, for real.
Wrong plot. This is more MIB than anything.
Why would I want something that will make me forget that the stove is hot and vegetables taste bad?
Because vegetables are good for you, and you'd be able to burn off you fingerprints so you could escape the cops?
I imagine that you knew at one time, and now you have been made to forget the details about the drug.
What drug?
Wow I just heard about something similar on WNYC's Radio Lab podcast. The podcast episode was from June of 2007.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08
Gee, I can't wait to see what uses this gets put to.
sweet... instead of punching my gf in the gut every time i knock her up, i can just give her this and skip town.
sure beats risking another DV charge.
What gf?
I was going to comment, but I don't remember reading the article.
this will work until the subject starts getting tattoos all over. john g. raped and murdered your wife
...life as a lab rat pretty much sucks.
wait what was this article about again?
Use Your Illusion II wasn't THAT bad:-P
Not to be a grammar Nazi, shouldn't the 'forgot' be 'forget' in the article? I've been seeing many random mistakes recently on Engadget and it gets on my nerves.
ZIP was there for a long time. It does not actually erase your memories, but packs them. Upon injection of UNZIP you will remember everything.
eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
How much did that Grant cost us?
I doubt drugs could ever be used to erase specific memories. How could you possibly manufacture a drug to erase a certain memory?
There was a piece about this from Radio lab (someone posted a link a while back). You can target specific memories because memory is a creative process involving the creation or reinforcement of specific neuropathways, not just storage as most people believe. So if you have someone in the act of remembering (say... someone with PTSD) and you time the drug administration so that it would disrupt this process and that specific memory will fade with successive treatments.
Yeah, but how do know where that specific memory is stored? You might be able to target a specific "region" but not a specific "memory" cause you don't know where that certain memory is; If it's even that simple anyway...I doubt memories are just simple "stored"
you're "stupid" because memory doesn't "work" like that.
Ah crap.
...life as a lab rat pretty much sucks.
Dammit. Sorry for the double post. I voted me down, too.
Forget about doble posting, rating down and whatnot, this is the future.
Something like this can only be used to harm people... Psychiatrists and their drug company buddies are evil.
Absolutely. As all sensible people know, mental illnesses are the result of thetans.
says you and Tom Cruise...
Hello ill-logical people....I'm 12 years old..
.
And it seems like you guys have an average IQ...of less than -2...
This is real science....it can help people forget traumatic experiences...
YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO USE THIS DRUG, SO YOU WON'T HAVE TO REMEMBER YOUR TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE; GETTING BEAT DOWN BY A 12 YEAR OLD SMARTER THAN YOU....
EVEN I MAY HAVE TO USE IT TO FORGET YOU! ;-0
so they finally invented it huh? They finally can erase some of the greatest memories in my head because they hurt to much to think about it. Have to think about this one, maybe it would be worth it to forget everything and everyone and do it all over again, then again I dont think i mean that, but some things to forget would be great, if we could pick what we wanted erased
This is a very dangerous study / drug and I am shocked that anyone is even investigating this. What's to prevent anyone from distributing this to average people and causing a major tragedy?
This is essentially a lobotomy without surgery. I don't care what illness people are suffering from and what this is trying to remedy, mmory is the only thing that made us different from the lesser animals, and what led to our thought process / self awareness. Take that away and you destroy humanity.
People, capitalism is so insidious that you do not want the market obsessed world to be in posession of anything like this. Think of how much damage that douche Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, did to the world. And he too was fucking with people's minds.
Time to be scared, for the future.
Do you realize this procedure requires surgery? They only have an animal model of "memory erasing," which means they did stereotaxic surgeries on rats and tested their behavior afterward. You want a magic pill that erases specific memories? That will take a long, long time if it's possible at all. Specific memories would be held at specific synapses, and pills don't target particular neurons...
Did you read the link? First sentence.
"Researchers at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center say they've prompted rodents to forget painful memories ***by injecting them with a drug called ZIP***, which interferes with a neural substance integral memory functions."
Do you realize that a chemical compound is being administered which erases memorY? I'm not trying to target any specific area, I just don't want the compound to be available even if the described technique requires surgery (an injection in this case). What's to prevent them from further developing this to eliminate the need for injection? Regardless, it's not something I will ever feel comfortable about. Memories are critical to humanity and no one should be trying to erase them.
There's already medications that can make you lose memories and have trouble retaining new ones. I was on welbutrin for a while and one of the known side effects is short term memory loss just like the rats experienced. I got to the point where I'd hook my keys to my belt loop and less than 5 minutes later i'd be freaking out thinking I lost them because I honestly didn't remember I put them there. Before I started taking it I could remember even the most insignificant details about things. That was one of the reasons i got off the crap and eventually my memory retention has gotten better. That sort of condition could end up being permanent if the subject starts taking a memory altering drug early on in life. Enhancing memories is great if they can really do it though.
"Did I fall asleep?"
my sentiments exactly, well kinda ... more like "one step closer to building my dollhouse"
As an aspiring neuroscientist, I'd just like to point out that this is very, very preliminary stuff. They only have an animal model, and not even the animal model is perfect--it zaps all kinds of memories because they can't target specific ones yet...though that's not to say they aren't close. I also wonder how they know it's the memory being zapped, and not something like their mood (i.e. a depressed rat may not respond correctly after habituation). I haven't read the paper, though, only the NYT article (which was highly exaggerated). Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind isn't quite here yet, folks...
This is fucking terrible. They should put an end to this right now. In my opinion, this is totally immoral and should never be done. Not to mention incredibly dangerous. Maybe they should take the drugs themselves and forget about the entire thing.
It could have very real therapeutic value, though. Think of soldiers with PTSD that could get rid of their symptoms with a simple injection of ZIP...the ethical questions, as with many existing drugs, come in with abuse, misuse, etc.
I'm doing my PhD on Long Term Potentiation, which is the memory storage process that this drug disrupts. The study came out late last year, but already it has proven invaluable in helping devise mechanisms for memory loss.
ZIP stands for Zeta Inhibitory Peptide, this drug inhibits a protein called PKM zeta that is responsible for maintaining long term memories.
The fantastic thing about this research is that we know have a positive identification on a possible target to combat memory loss in things like Alzheimer's disease.
Any suggestions that this research be discontinued are ignoring the fact that this is some very important research.
@Jose, I agree with you, but there is a big dilemma in regards to what could you do with a drug like that if used to cause harm. And if you read any history book, you will see that any new invention was used mainly, to cause harm. After that was done, a civil use would be released to the public and off you go. Got to be careful with that!
Hm.
...in the future....
You cant Zip and Drive man, they are really cracking down on Iomega's this time of year.
One step closer to building my "Dollhouse".