Unfortunately though, as much as I’m hoping for this to be true, working and available in the market, it’s not; this is an experiment that only worked on a mouse and it only removed traumatic memories. Researchers have recently discovered that by altering a specific protein in the brain, it can remove scary memories on a molecular level.
Several neuroscientists caught a few rats, exposed them to scary noises, watched what happened in their brains when these mice were scared and found one specific part of the brain to be most active during the process – the amygdala. As it turns out, the amygdala is responsible for forming memories that are connected with emotional events and one particular protein in the nerve cell helps make that connection to establish a memory.
The scientists then removed the protein from the nerve cells and voila! The traumatic memory was not only suppressed, it was completely and permanently removed from the brain. Unfortunately though, the proteins are most active about 24 hours after the event and disappear within 48 hours so this process can only work on the most recent memories…at least, on a rat.
Researchers are now hoping that they can create a drug that can target at the protein and prevent the formation of traumatic memories. Awesome, you can push someone down the stairs, pop the pill in their mouth and they probably won’t remember you when they wake up.
(Source: Dvice)
