DailyDirt: How To Forget (When You Want To)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Sep 2nd 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is based on a fictional technology that allows people to selectively forget events in their life that they don't want to remember. While that whole movie was dedicated to erasing memories, memory loss actually isn't an uncommon plot device. For example, Men In Black had "neuralyzers" that zapped away a person's memory, and the main character in Memento suffered from a complete loss of his short-term memory. (And don't forget all the soap operas that use amnesia in various convenient situations.) In reality, it's much harder to induce forgetfulness on demand, but some research could make it easier to do so in the future. Here are a few studies you might want to remember -- and later forget.

Xenon gas is already used medically for anesthesia and diagnostic imaging, but it might some day be useful for erasing unwanted memories. So far, though, only mice have been dosed with a low concentration of xenon to successfully block some receptors involved in memory formation. [url]
Selectively inhibiting memories for drug-addicted mice seems to erase drug-related memories and keep other remembrances intact. In one study, mice still remembered food rewards and foot shocks, but they didn't remember cues related to methamphetamine dosages. [url]
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been getting popular for tinkering with all kinds of brain functions (or disorders), and it has been shown to enhance memory in healthy people. The effects of TMS haven't yet been extensively studied (especially on healthy people), but it could be useful for understanding the mechanisms of memory -- and forgetting. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: amnesia, brain, forgetfulness, memory, memory loss, neuralyzers, tms, transcranial magnetic stimulation, xenon

3 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

The First Word

“

Just because I have some time and an insatiable curiosity, I searched for more info about the mechanism by which a noble gas can affect living beings. The short answer is: nobody seems to know yet. The most comprehensive paper I could find quantifies the anesthetic effects, the dosage required, the receptors involved, and so forth at length. But when it comes to answering the "how" question (what is the chemical process?), it comes up empty.

Recent in vitro research has suggested that xenon acts not only on NMDA channels but also on TREK-1 channels (discussed above). TREK-1 channels are also activated by the neuroprotective agents riluzole,63 a therapeutic agent used to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Consequently, it has been postulated that these channels contribute to neuroprotection. As TREK-1 channels are activated by intracellular acidosis and reduce neuronal excitability, this is certainly feasible.

Xenon is not ‘inert’ with respect to cerebral haemodynamics; increased cerebral blood flow (CBF) with preserved cerebral autoregulation is thought to occur acutely with xenon administration.

—John Fenderson

”

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Mason Wheeler (profile), 2 Sep 2014 @ 5:06pm

I'm a bit surprised at the bit about the xenon. Xenon is a noble gas: except in highly extreme laboratory conditions that definitely don't exist within the body of a living mammal, it's chemically inert. It doesn't interact with living systems or mess around with chemical processes. So how exactly does it go about changing the way brain chemistry works?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- John Fenderson (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 9:28am
  
  Re:
  It does seem to have effects on biological systems in the right doses. An aside from the FDA factsheet on xenon 133:
  
  Xenon Xe 133 Gas is chemically and physiologically similar to elemental xenon, a non-radioactive gas which is physiologically inert except for anesthetic properties at high doses.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - John Fenderson (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 1:23pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Just because I have some time and an insatiable curiosity, I searched for more info about the mechanism by which a noble gas can affect living beings. The short answer is: nobody seems to know yet. The most comprehensive paper I could find quantifies the anesthetic effects, the dosage required, the receptors involved, and so forth at length. But when it comes to answering the "how" question (what is the chemical process?), it comes up empty.
    
    Recent in vitro research has suggested that xenon acts not only on NMDA channels but also on TREK-1 channels (discussed above). TREK-1 channels are also activated by the neuroprotective agents riluzole,63 a therapeutic agent used to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Consequently, it has been postulated that these channels contribute to neuroprotection. As TREK-1 channels are activated by intracellular acidosis and reduce neuronal excitability, this is certainly feasible.
    
    Xenon is not ‘inert’ with respect to cerebral haemodynamics; increased cerebral blood flow (CBF) with preserved cerebral autoregulation is thought to occur acutely with xenon administration.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]