Information taken from http://www.deltaflow.com/?p=402
Videos can be found here http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/21/memory_drug? But these were offline when I wanted to watch them.
60 minutes has a report (A Pill to Forget?) (Video’s here) on a drug that can erase memories. Propranolol is a drug that (among other things) seems to erase link between an intense emotional event and the memory.
Psychiatrists hope to treat patients suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (i.e. victims of war, rape, or accidents). Usually if someone has experienced a traumatic event and then, years later, sees or hears something that reminds them of that experience, then the emotions from the trauma come back in full force. However, the drug shows promise that it can remove these painful memories.
Looking at the site it doesn’t seam professional to me and as I read I get the impression it is just some made up drug, it talks about death and memories after death. I’m not sure how to react at the moment but I shall look further into this to find out if it is fact or merely fiction.
Opponents of the drug believe that our memories make us who we are. Erasing painful memories would rob us of the chance to become better people. They also fear the drug will be used recreationally, to erase minor unpleasant or embarrassing moments from our memory.
I thought this was really interesting saying memories make us who we are and removing them will remove a part of our person. The chance to become a better person through bad memories is good argument against the pill (if it is real).
I looked into this so called pill and it was called http://www2.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/100002177.html
It works by blocking communication paths in the body like most drugs and the advantages are mainly a lower blood pressure. Reading through the text there was nothing about memory and the loss of it and I tried looking for side effect but I couldn't find any relating to memory.
I then looked into PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) on wiki and found this little paragraph.
Propranolol, a beta blocker which appears to inhibit the formation of traumatic memories by blocking adrenaline's effects on the amygdala, has been used in an attempt to reduce the impact of traumatic events.
I found some more informative text from here http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/memory_drugs_sd.html
Memory-altering drug research is currently focused on propranolol, one of several so-called beta blockers widely used to reduce blood pressure, treat abnormal heart rhythms and prevent migraines. The brand name for propranolol is Inderal. Other beta blocker brand names are Inderide, Innopran XL, Betachron E-R, Kerlone, Lopressor, Tenormin, Toprol XL, Visken and Zebeta.
Beta blockers work by "blocking" the simulative influence of stress hormones – specifically adrenaline – upon the body, relaxing blood vessels and slowing nerve impulses inside the heart.
Experiments indicate propranolol also blocks the effect of adrenaline upon areas of the brain involved in memory formation, including the amygdala. It seems to disconnect emotion from memory.
Cahill and McGaugh then presented the second, emotionally upsetting story with slides to a third group of volunteers who were given a standard dose of propranolol or endurol (another beta blocker). Their memories, when tested three weeks later, were "just like that of subjects who had received the boring story," said McGaugh.
It seems the pill is taken when the memories at that time want to be forgotten for the present time. I think I need to look into PTSD treatments to fully understand how the beta blockers work to block memories from the past.
Subjects remembered the story, but without any emotional depth.
Such findings suggest an obvious potential therapeutic benefit: If people who have just experienced a traumatic event could be given a memory-dampening drug like propranolol, they might avoid suffering later psychic damage, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.
This would seem to suggest that it would be taken just after an event which would not want to be remembering on an emotional level. The users don’t forget the event but they lost the emotions which came from the event. Examples would be in war or where disturbing events occur, mostly involving death.
In its report, the council worries that dampening painful memories – or in the future, erasing them altogether – may disconnect people from reality or their true selves.
I found this little statement quite interesting looking at the world as a reality and removing something from your memory alters a persons sense of reality and identity. Each person must have their own sense of what reality is, but their own memories must form this reality. I could possibly take some ideas this way and look at how a memory would affect the perception of what a reality is. I have already looked a little into dreaming which in itself is a non-reality created around events, ideas, emotions and memories.
"It's the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain, or guilt," said Dr. Leon Kass
I also liked the idea that it could be seen as a disposable pill, linking with the removal of an event which shouldn't if didn't want to happen. I can see the pills place in society for example a rape victim who shouldn't have to remember what they went thought. There is no learning taken from the experience the victim has to hold for the rest of their lives. Some people get deeply depressed by the emotions they feel and simply cannot live out their lives like before the event. The drug would allow them to continue their lives with ought the emotional baggage from what happened.
For example, the council posited, what if somebody committed an act of violence and then took propranolol to dull the emotional impact. Would they come to think of violence as more tolerable than it really is?
Here is another situation which is against the use of the drug. By dulling the emotional response a crime committed this could allow the crime to be repeated without any regrets or doubts from the emotions remembered from the previous crime.
McGaugh and similarly minded researchers doubt science will ever be able to probe an individual's mind, precisely plucking and altering specific memories like they do in movies. The brains of real people are far too complex. Memories aren't single molecules or neurons, but intricate patterns of biochemical and electrical energy occurring in various parts of the brain and different levels of the mind.
Anderson and Gabrieli discovered that when people consciously determine not to think about something they do not want to remember, their ability to recall that memory gradually weakens. Call it motivated forgetting.
Prospects of a pill-to-forget hitting the market anytime soon are nil.
Again taken from the same site it tells us that reparation allows the forgetting of a memory. Reparation allows us to encode for long term memory but it works the other way around too. Another small statement tells us that a pill to forget is just a science and will not become commercialized any time soon.
After a bit more research I found out diazepam a drug marketed as Valium also has memory impairing effects.
taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valium
Benzodiazepines such as diazepam impair learning and memory via their action on benzodiazepine receptors which causes a dysfunction in the cholinergic neuronal system.
I came across BBC news which talks about the opposite of a pill which allows the 'boost' of memory.
taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4539551.stm
The article explains that is the drug causes the reactions in the brain to occur which usually fails with sleep. They cause neutrons to communicate with each other better. This allows for better learning and enhances memory. The carried out an experiment which people too either a dummy pill or the real pill and then were tested throughout the night. The people who took the pill performed the tasks much better than the people who took the dummy pill.
Taken from find articles http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_6_21/ai_62277748
I found a nice question which I have already been asking myself throughout this pill research. I thought it would be a good idea to document these and reference back to them when generating more focused ideas about my project.
What if you could swallow a little pill that gave you a photographic memory, the ability to form long-term memories instantly?
This is something I would like to look at in my work. There is an advertisement for a glasses company in which a man is walking through the woods and everything his eyes capture fall at his feet in the form of a Polaroid. I have thought of using something like this which might look into Photographic memory as a theme. Using a Polaroid camera myself you can create some interesting images. With analog photography it’s all in the chemicals, like memory it isn't perfect. Using expired film gives unexpected results like an unsure memory. Colours are not what they are in reality, as a memory which is unsure of the colour of a car, clothing or street sign.
From the same article there was an experiment with flies which explored the ability to speed up memory being encoded into long term memory with little repetition needed.
Yin and Tully tested the flies by placing them in the middle of a double-ended tube and blowing tennis-shoe scent in one end and licorice scent in the other. Flies with normal levels of the memory protein needed to be zapped 10 times before they stopped moving toward the licorice scent. In other words, they could build the neural connections needed for an "Avoid licorice!" memory, but it required spaced repetition--just as normal humans must say a sentence over and over again to memorize it. Yin and Tully then tested a strain with low levels of memory protein and found that those poor flies never made the structural changes necessary for lasting memory. No matter how many shocks they received, they went for licorice scent as often as they went for tennis-shoe scent.
The flies with an overabundance of memory protein formed long-term memory instantly. After only one trial, they knew to avoid licorice the rest of their lives. Tully points out that these flies haven't gotten smarter--they'll never solve quadratic equations. Extra memory protein simply accelerates the pace of memorization by eliminating the need for repetition.
Showing how information is transferred into the longterm memory in the film 'The Matrix'
What would the world be like if you could take a pill and learn without repetition? The Matrix uses a way of sending information into our Semantic and Procedural memory which in almost instant. Would this pill strive to be more like the futuristic feels we see today? How long would it take a child to pass though school?
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