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Many of us watched the romantic drama “Eternal Sunshine” pure mind. “She tells of a man and a woman who were once in love, however, after a series of quarrels, they decided to stop their relationships and erase each other’s memory to cross out forever this page from your life.
Is the idea of changing memories so fantastic?
Despite the fact that today this film is considered a work with elements of fiction in the foreseeable future its genre component may be revised. Scientists report that changing memories may soon become real reality.
A photo from open sources
More recently, neuroscientists from Canada and the United States found that with the formation in the human brain of various types of memory, albeit identical neurons are used, but the processes in them are occur completely different. Such a discovery can result in developing highly effective treatments for negative psychological conditions, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder and causeless anxiety.
How the mechanism of anxiety works in the brain of memories
Memories of negative events, according to scientists, can cause uncontrolled anxiety attacks in a person. To test this hypothesis, American and Canadian researchers from Columbia University and McGill University analyzed neurons of mollusks aplisia.
Memory, as you know, is stored in neurons. She becomes long-term due to synapses – a kind of chemical “bridges”, uniting neurons in groups. Memories of events in progress which our body has been harmed by (e.g., experiencing beating or touching a hot surface) is encoded into a so-called associative memory, and connections between neurons are strengthened – a synapse appears.
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The experience gained by a living being, however, is not always is boilerplate. Say, if you stand at the stove, and in your the doorbell rings unexpectedly, you may accidentally touch hot plates, and in the future such calls will be unchanged you are associated with this injury. And many people have heard nearby dog barking, immediately experience an unpleasant feeling of fear, as if they were being attacked by stray dogs again.
Even if you touch the hot plate unconsciously or just felt a false fear of attack, neurons in your unfortunately, this information is still recorded to the brain. And such “unnecessary” memory sometimes creates significant inconvenience for people, acting as an anxiety trigger. Many individuals suffer from “unnecessary” memory from post-traumatic stress disorders For example, a person who has survived a war may experience a strong sense of panic when he hears a salute, fireworks or even explosions from the exhaust pipe of a car.
The formation of random and long-term memory
The synaptic label hypothesis that turn random stable and long-term memory, was proposed back in 1997 year. True, then scientists thought that biochemical processes, which are behind the formation of long-term and short-term memories have the same properties, therefore distinguish these processes are impossible.
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However, researchers from Canada and the United States are now determined that synaptic labels in neurons are still different. For example, experiments with mollusks showed that the bond strength synoptic contacts depends on the production of two different kinds of proteins called kinases: M Apl III kinases and M Apl kinases I. If you achieve selective blocking of one such kinase, then it will actually erase from the brain a certain type of memory relating to one or another event, for example, an unpleasant one.
Of course, while we are talking only about synaptic connections in mollusk neurons. However, experts argue that vertebrates, including humans, have very similar kinases that serve to memory formation. It’s possible that in the near future people subjected, for example, to violence, will be able to drink one single pill, and all the negative associations associated with this unpleasant experiences will be erased. The individual, of course, will remember that with him however, the experience will not make him afraid of the dark streets, random passers-by, solo walks, etc.
