Image: Fredrik Broden
In Brief
- Toxic memories are the basis of pathologies from phobias to pain. Legions of neuroscientists have tried to marshal our understanding of how memories form in the brain to try to reverse this process in patients who need to escape the legacy of psychological or physical trauma.
- ZIP, an eponymous biochemical, wipes a rat’s memory but is incapable of selecting only “bad” memories for removal.
- Turning down the level of pain associated with anticipated trauma or a just experienced ordeal may come about from administration of drugs that decrease the levels of stress-related norepinephrine.
- A rewrite of personal history may represent yet another strategy. When old memories are recalled, drugs or behavioral therapies might alter the tainted emotional coloration surrounding them.
More In This Article
The rat is on a carousel with clear plastic sides, rotating slowly in a small room. As it looks out through the plastic, it sees markings on the walls of the room from which it can determine its position. At a certain location it receives a foot shock—or, in experimenters’ jargon, a negative reinforcement.* When that happens, the rat turns sharply around and walks tirelessly in the opposite direction, so it never reaches that same place in the room again. It will do this to the point of exhaustion.
Question: How do you get the rat to stop walking? Note that just turning off the shock will not suffice, because the rat will not allow itself to enter the danger zone. The rat needs an intervention that helps it forget its fear or that overrides its response with a competing signal of safety.
This article was originally published with the title Erasing Painful Memories.
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
Rights & Permissions
See what we're tweeting about
17 Comments
Add CommentI read this article with some interest and a bit of disgust too. Adler comments early on about an experiment where a rat is shocked at a certain point in the rotation of a turntable, and ever after the rat walks, against the direction of the turntable, to avoid the spot where it was shocked. Adler says "the rat will do this to exhaustion". I am wondering what the scientific value is in knowing the rat will "do this to exhaustion"? If anyone can advise on this I'd be happy to understand that "to exhaustion" had some real purpose, and was not just the whim of experimenters "hey dude, let's see how long the rat will do this...." ( AKA ignorant animal cruelty and abuse ). Do please comment if you can think of a valid reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLikewise, after describing this treatment of the rat and finishing his remarks, Adler says "so much for the rat". Hmmmmm. So much for animal based science.
Sorry, but this shows the control the drug companies have. A skilled hypnotist can do the same thing or better in a couple of sessions with less cost and time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may have to do with the intensity of avoidance behavior. There is a principle called desensitization from repeated exposure to a stimulus. That stimulus can be either positive or negative. Once an animal (including humans) becomes desensitized, avoidance behavior may become minimal or even non-existent. Desensitization can occur faster with a mild stimulus than a strong stimulus, therefore an animals attempt to avoid the stimulus to the point of exhaustion is an indication of the perceived intensity of the stimulus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou may want to look into learned helplessness as well.
There is just something wrong about smacking the baby because it is crying before you know why the baby is crying, and even then you shouldn't smack the baby; that draws the attention from the first cause and creates another cause that you will have to deal with. In this article, the scientist didn't deal with the second cause they created for the mouse, but allowed the mouse to continue in the second cause, knowing that the first cause still existed, until it exhausted itself. This is not only cruel but also stupid. Creating a cause does not get rid of another cause; what you have done is compounded the cause and probably caused a long term problem that may be impossible to deal with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI found it more successful to just take the subject away from the cause and slowly over write the cause until it no longer exist. It is like picking dust up from a table one grain at a time until all the dust is gone. It takes time, but in the end, you made a great achievement without adding to the existing problem.
Thanks to 'sparcboy' for providing more context on the "to exhaustion" aspect of the described experiment. I can see how knowing the intensity of the rat's reaction by some unmistakable measure could have scientific value......but I can't agree that "to exhaustion" represented such a value.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that the rat kept up his avoidance behavior for an extended, measured period could have been enough information to validate any later intervention.
So I do not see how extending the experiment "to exhaustion", as described, was not simply careless torture of the animal.
As a voice in the wilderness, working against pointless abuses such as these, I certainly know about learned helplessness. Scientists who continue Animal experiments well beyond their useful point, resulting in needless torture of their subjects, in order to insure acceptance of results by the 'Scientific community', are prime examples of learned (or enforced) helplessness.
Keep in mind that this is just a brief preview of the print article. The full article is nearly 5 pages, beginning on page 56 of the May 2012 print issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI haven't read the article, at least so far I haven't. However, I'd be more concerned about the effect that this approach of psychiatry's past and current attempts to treat seriously affected patients by "erasing painful memories".
I understand that frontal lobotomies were fairly common and considered effective at 'quieting' highly disturbed patients, making their institutional maintenance less difficult.
I've seen first hand the results and effects that electroshock 'therapy' had on patients - a treatment that was employed for many years.
The concern is that, while seriously affected patients are certainly debilitated by their focus on memories of painful experiences, real or imagined, it seems that erasing such memories simply eliminates the symptoms of faulty memory processing. I suspect that eliminating the products of faulty memory processing will not prevent recurrence of "painful memories" in the future.
I hope psychiatry is not simply pursuing a more sophisticated and selective method of lobotomizing patients. I suspect that in many if not most patients, it's more critically the processing of memories that is faulty than simply the existence of debilitating memories.
Sometimes remedies are much worse than the disease they pretend improving. In 1972 I met in Brussels a girl, that after watching Stanley Kubrik's "A Clockwork Orange", said: "I've had also a psychoanalysis, and it's horrifying". In the papers about schyzophrenia, the disease in a subset of patients suffering it was called "Psychoanalysis-induced psychosis". Watch your step!. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI shudder to think of the probable intended purpose for this work: super soldiers who can go back again and again and suffer no "ill effects". Depressing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisErasing memories, next step - implanting false memories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome say there are people that actually can do the thing of modifying your personality, imprinting a desired personality or way of responses in front of challenges, and have you held in servitude; erasing your memories or introducing some false memories, as in the movie by P Verhoeven "Total recall" would be a minor step in this line. In the occultist and shamanistic circles, this ability is called "the will", some call it "instant hypnosis". It has been from long time ago a feature atributed to black magic sorcerers, but if this really exists, and some day it becomes a proven fact, you'll find that if the people supposedly having this power use it like sorcerers do, finally they will be given the consideration and treatment of sorcerers. The times of burning witches are gone, but for sure any evildoer will have to respond for his/her actions. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOthers call "the will": "spooky action at distance" or "quantum entanglement", if you don't have fun it's just because you don't want to. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this""remembering is not just a process of passively storing impressions. It is a continuous, dynamic activity on the cellular level and an ongoing psychological process open to manipulation with drugs and cognitive therapy. This is wonderful news for combat veterans and victims of assaults and accidents."" My concern with 'Erasing Painful Memories' is, do we then forget the lessons associated with that memory that would hopefully protect us in the future to 'see' the same situation and then be able to avoid it before it happens again? Also while research is great and drugs marvelous what happens to them in the hands of the unscrupulous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe passive subjects of "the will" would be zombies and golems. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose who may feel somebody is trying to impose his/her "will" on them are called "sufferers of delusions of influence".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReasons for and Method of Brain Washing
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy brain wash? The simple fact is that the ability to remove unwanted character traits, whether voluntary ones that lead to a life of crime, or due to illness such as Alzheimer's, or due to brain injury such as being wounded in wars is a good thing. Removing bad memories that lead to such things as depression, manic depression and psychopathy can also be treated in the same way.
The Kadir-Buxton Method is done by making a fist of both hands, and striking both ears of the patient at exactly the same time and pressure with the soft part of the inner hand which is where the thumb joins the hand. Please see the diagram on page 1 of my website.
The procedure is painless and the patient regains consciousness faster the less hard the double blow is struck. With practice, I am able to render the patients unconscious for only thirty seconds. Other individuals have faired even better.
Removing unwanted character traits is the same as removing bad memories. For example, if the patient is one of the 80% of battle casualties that have brain damage, then the new character traits have to be found by interviewing family and friends. If the patient is more violent they should be asked to remember their reasons and emotions for violence as vividly as possible, and the stun technique is then used. The procedure of remembering the reasons for violence must be remembered again twice more and the stun technique used on each occasion. Once the memory is eradicated, the patient is cured of the personality change, and the other changes witnessed can be worked upon. Whilst there is not much hope of getting the patient's personality back exactly how it was it is a great improvement on doing nothing.
Please don't forget the Helsinki Declaration on Biomedical experimentation in human subjects. Also as a Good Clinical Practice rule, the patient or subject must be informed about the goals of the procedure / therapy offered, its risks and benefits, and also about the possible alternatives to the proposed intervention. In ideal conditions, a written informed consent must be obtained for everything, and the patient should be given a time ample enough to think about his/her decission. Psychotherapy interventions have no connection at all with surgery, but equally as brain surgery they may involve irreversible side effects, you may watch a recently released series of filmed interviews wit Karl Gustav Jung, the psychoanalyst who taught the free associations method to Sigmund Freud, he speaks openly about "Mutilating therapies"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis sounds to me like just a morbid variation of Pavlov's dog. Nothing new to be learned here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this