In its serial drama Heroes ABC NBC coined a disturbing new ability for the superhero genre – a dude who can reach into others’ minds and erase specific memories. One can imagine some positive uses for this ability (e.g., PTSD) but most are really, really bad. Pretty much any government that can do this automatically has the kind of power that turns good leaders bad.
Prepared or not, we may soon have that ability:
A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact.
[…] they trained rats to fear two different musical tones, by playing them at the same time as giving the rats an electric shock. Then, they gave half the rats a drug known to cause limited amnesia (U0126, which is not approved for use in people), and reminded all the animals, half of which were still under the influence of the drug, of one of their fearful memories by replaying just one of the tones.When they tested the rats with both tones a day later, untreated animals were still fearful of both sounds, as if they expected a shock. But those treated with the drug were no longer afraid of the tone they had been reminded of under treatment. The process of re-arousing the rats’ memory of being shocked with the one tone while they were drugged had wiped out that memory completely, while leaving their memory of the second tone intact.
LeDoux’s team also confirms the idea that a part of the brain called the amygdala is central to this process – communication between neurons in this part of the brain usually increases when a fearful memory forms, but it decreases in the treated rats. This shows that the fearful memory is actually deleted, rather than simply breaking the link between the memory and a fearful response.
As with all such studies treat this as preliminary. Further work will need to confirm the results and show to what degree this extends to memories that don’t just relate to fear conditioning. In fact it would relieve me if the erasing mechanism only worked through the amygdala, since that would prevent the process from reaching happy memories (e.g., your wedding day) or neutral ones. However, if we can pull out any memory simply by administering the drug and forcing us to recall it, well…
On another point, the identity of the drug made my jaw hit the floor. Try searching Google Scholar for “U0126” and you will get an overwhelming number of hits that relate to virtually every process in our body. The drug inhibits a signaling pathway (the Raf-MEK-ERK kinase cascade) that is the cell biology equivalent of Kevin Bacon. One has a hard time finding any process more than three degrees removed.
The target pathway’s many hats (cell cycle, cytoskeleton, stress response, growth, differentiation, motility, etc) suggests that U0126 will be the mother of all side effect drugs, meaning that it probably won’t be approved for humans. However, the potential for abuse suggests in many cases USDA approval will only matter so much. It’s ubiquitous in reasearch (I could name two or three nearby labs that use it) and pretty inexpensive. People who really want it can get it.
As for what to do about that, I don’t have many suggestions. Stifling research makes no sense when some other government will get there if we don’t. The only real take-home here is that people should be ready for some weird and disturbing results to come out of the field of neuroscience in the next ten years.
ThymeZone
Does it wipe out the memory of two years of Darrell?
Sign me up.
John Cole
I have a memory of some pretty awkward sex as a 17 year old I want erased. Do they take credit cards?
srv
Maybe this is what they use at Gitmo and on folks like Padilla. Is it torture if you don’t remember it?
Mr Furious
Beat me too it, TZ.
Krista
I have a few memories I’d like erased. Hopefully it won’t have the same brain-scrambling long-term effects as the mind-sweeping powers of Heroes’ Jimmy Jean-Louis’ character (a.k.a. the Haitian Sensation.)
I love that show. Love it with the heat of a thousand suns.
Brian
Tim, sorry to be picky, but NBC has Heroes. Unless ABC refers to something else, in which case my apologies.
Brian
Tim, sorry to be picky, but NBC has Heroes. Unless ABC refers to something else, in which case my apologies.
Krista
At that age, is there really any other kind of sex?
jg
Will it wipe out the memory of that Affleck movie about getting your memory wiped? Probably the worst adaptation of a Philip K Dick short story to date. It has a chance of being unseated by the upcoming Nick Cage summer vehicle NEXT, which from the trailer I’ve seen bears little resemblance to ‘Golden Man’.
Andrew
Can’t we have a post on really hot blond chicks with split personalities and super strength instead?
RandyH
A few weeks back there was an episode of Boston Legal where a teenage girl was sexually molested by a disgusting-looking rabbi or some such religious figure and her father (a shrink) was suing her mother to allow their daughter to be treated with something like this drug so they could erase the memory that will no doubt haunt their formerly virgin daughter forever (like John’s 17-year old awkward sex memory.) But time was of the essence in this case. If they waited more than a few days the memory would be too set-in to affect. I can’t remember which side won, but it was an interesting moral/ethical debate, played out in a courtroom drama.
Krista
There is quite a bit of eye candy on that show, isn’t there? I wonder what Stormy makes of it…she always had an excellent eye for male pulchritude.
The Other Andrew
Geek moment: mindwipes have been a superhero staple since at least the ’60s. Professor Xavier (of X-Men fame) routinely deleted memories for both good reasons (trauma) and shady reasons (covering up his team’s actions).
Sam
If we didn’t remember our awkward (or: awful, attrocious) 17-year-old sex, would we understand how much better our sex is today?
RandyH
And looky what the nifty Google-Froogle search turns up. Readily available to order online. I don’t know what credit cards they take, John.
Cyrus
Yeah, the Haitian’s power is only unique in that it’s his only one. Plenty of comic book characters have memory-erasing as part of a package with mind-reading, psychic communication, etc. The same for Matt Parkman, and maybe even Nathan Petrelli — comics have plenty of fliers, but off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone that just flies.
Krista
Well, Nathan Petrelli does look incredibly lickable when wearing just pajama bottoms. That’s a superpower, isn’t it?
Pb
No, I rather liked Paycheck, actually. Maybe it helps that I didn’t read the book.
Andrew
Paycheck was based on a ~10 page short story.
David
Wow, the script must have been twice that!
jaime
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes, well, to mind.
I would NOT want my memories wiped…even the horrible ones.
Vladi G
I take a drug that wipes out memories all the time. It’s called alcohol.
Justin Slotman
NERD ALERT!
“The same for Matt Parkman, and maybe even Nathan Petrelli — comics have plenty of fliers, but off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone that just flies.”
Angel–before he got the Archangel powers.
srv
Bad teen sex, Philip K. Dick adaptations, Darrell discussing GOP homoerotocism, an Attorney General who doesn’t know what his Chief of Staff and President are doing behind closed doors, Abe Simpson and Selma hooking up…
Could Dinesh and Osama be right?
scarshapedstar
I can name a few wingnut bloggers who are quite possibly already involved in the secret testing of this substance.
Rome Again
What does not kill us serves to make us stronger. Having it easy is the weak-willed suggestion.
Zifnab
Maybe we could use these drugs on the collective executive staff of FOX, CNN, and MSNBC to make them all forget ANS existed. Then I could use said drugs on myself and be happy.
Sstarr
Hey, look at this! According to this book there was a SECOND president Bush, between Bill and Hillary Clinton’s presidencies. Huh. His term must have been uneventful.
Teak111
Looks like you can really buy that stuff. Wow.
Tim F.
Don’t. I’m serious, the list of potential side effects goes on for sixteen pages.
Rome Again
Yes, but during a television commercial for said drug, a qualified auctioneer will be able to list off the side affects in less than 12 seconds while they flash the entire list in 1 point text across the bottom of the screen which you’re not looking at because the top half is showing something totally unrelated to the commercial with colorful graphics that are MUCH more interesting.
CaseyL
The excerpt only talks about erasing recent memories. I wonder about erasing old ones, of major traumas that led to entire behavioral changes.
Say, the memory of parental abuse, which usually leads to problems with trust and intimacy later on in life.
Would erasing the memory of the abuse also erase the secondary and tertiary effects? Or would the person still have problems with trust and intimacy, but not know why?
Rome Again
Good question. It could make coming to terms with what you did to cope a complete mystery after treatment. Imagine how interesting THAT would be.
Steve B
I must personally take exception to your suggestion that the wedding day memories are necessarily POSITIVE ones…
Bruce Moomaw
Obviously White House aides have been mainlining the stuff recently. As for worrisome future psychobiological technologies, though, just wait until we start coming up with really effective emotion-control drugs in a few decades, and then see what the human race does with THOSE (whether governmentally or — more likely — on an individual basis). “The Economist” had a cover story a few years ago on the implications.
Gary Farber
“LeDoux’s team also confirms the idea that a part of the brain called the amygdala is central to this process….”
Ya think?
:-)
mclaren
This could be extremely scary. Imagine if the government put this stuff in the water supply. Why, the American public wouldn’t even remember if their President did anything heinous or illegal, like, oh, I dunno, invading a foreign country for no reason, or signing bilsl authorizing torture.
Thank heaven our wonderful President has never done anything like that. At least, I don’t recall seeing any news reports to that effect…
Rome Again
“Step away from the faucet…”