Is It Possible to Erase Traumatic Memories?

posted on Jun 14 by Admin in the Disability News, Health, Healthcare, Veterans category

One day could traumatic memories be erased from the brain to enhance the everyday lives of individuals, who would normally be haunted by these memories? Scientists are on their way to finding out, as their research is beginning to show we are indeed able to weaken memories, thus reducing the effect on one’s mind. These studies have apparently lead to major insights into the cell biology of long-term memory.

“I think we will be able to alter memories someday to reduce the trauma from our brains,” said the study’s senior author, David Glanzman, a UCLA professor of neurobiology studying the cellular and molecular mechanisms of learning and memory.

So far Glanzman and his team have clinically proven to have substantially weakened a marine snail’s long-term memory. With the snail they discovered that adding a phosphate (an inorganic chemical)  changes the proteins which are relevant to memory. The substance affected is called protein kinase M (PKM), which is of the class of proteins associated with memory.

Protein kinases act as on-off switches, but the difference with PKM is that there is no off for it, meaning that once it’s activated, it stays on until it degrades. What the researchers have discovered is that if they inhibit PKM in the marine snail, they erase their ability to store long-term memories of reactions to a stimuli. The exciting part is that marine snail brains are actually quite evolved.

“Almost all the processes that are involved in memory in the snail also have been shown to be involved in memory in the brains of mammals,” said Glanzman.

Glanzman has discovered that the mechanisms involved in learning and memory are fundamentally connected. Applying this research to humans may be a long time off still, however, but the ethical and social implications are very intriguing.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110427154315.htm