The mystery of the brain - erasing specific memories.

I thought this was quite an interesting post - as researches come to discover more and more about the human mind we face the possibility of using such knowledge to help humanity in significant ways. Could you imagine being able to help a victim of abuse to find freedom from the nightmares and memories of the abusive event? Or, how about a crime victim being freed from the fear of recurring attacks?

Of course the converse questions also need consideration - is it not useful to have a healthy sense of concern about certain areas and situations, based upon one's memory of previous bad experience? I, for one, drive a lot more carefully since having my motorcycle accident! Whilst the accident was unpleasant it has at least left me with a much healthier respect for the dangers of riding my bike!

Anyway, here's the post:

As researchers learn more about how memory works, the possibility of targeted amnesia becomes more feasible. Scientists recently succeeded in wiping out a nasty memory from the mind of a genetically-engineered mouse. By altering the activity of a specific enzyme, they affected a mouse's ability to recall the experience of being shocked. The team from the Medical College of Georgia and the East China Normal University reported their findings in the science journal Neuron. From Science news:

Insight from such experiments may one day lead to therapies that can erase traumatic memories for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or wipe clean drug-associated cues that lead addicts to relapse.

?We should never think of memories as being fixed,? says Howard Eichenbaum, a neuroscientist at Boston University. ?They are constantly being renovated and restructured.?

Eichenbaum is not convinced that Tsien and his colleagues have erased the mice?s memories. Altering a memory so that it can?t be recalled under certain circumstances might produce similar results, he says. ?We never know for sure that it?s really gone,? he says.

But if chemicals can help someone specifically forget painful or traumatic memories, it may be irrelevant whether the memories are entirely erased or are just altered beyond recognition, Eichenbaum says.

"Selective memory"