Ever seen the brilliant movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? It's a Kaufmann screenplay. Brilliant. It's about people who have painful breakups and then choose to delete their memories of those people. With Carrey and Winslet. Great film. Also a great cautionary tale why this drug may be a crap idea. Go see it and you'll see why.
Scientists have discovered a drug that could erase fearful memories in humans.
The method, using existing blood pressure pills, could be useful for weakening or erasing bad memories in people with post-traumatic stress disorder, the researchers say.
Unfortunately, other research has shown, bad memories stick better than good ones.
Studies in animal models have shown that fearful memories sometimes change when recalled, a process known as reconsolidation, and that this reconsolidation stage is vulnerable to the blood pressure drugs, called
beta-adrenergic receptor blockers.
In the new study on humans, by Merel Kindt and colleagues at University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, 60 subjects were taught to associate pictures of spiders with a mild shock, creating a fearful memory. Later, they were given either a beta-blocker called propranolol or a placebo.
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