Scientists show that it's possible to erase specific memories in the brain
Are you a scientist? Have you recently read a peer-reviewed paper that you want to write about? Then contact Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the blog The Frontal Cortex and the book Proust Was a Neuroscientist.
Moheb Costandi is a graduate student in the Wellcome Laboratory for Molecular Pharmacology at the University College of London
See what we're tweeting about
mocost Yahoo! relaunches new-look Flickr with a terabyte of free space http://t.co/BtAzU9wILn mocost Scholars in Bondage: Dogma dominates academic studies of kinks and fetishes, says Camille Paglia http://t.co/znxSoDWD36
BrainyActs The amnesic patient H.M. had many surprises - hippocampus gone, yet still had occasional seizures. http://t.co/VRWMkDFq2Y #epilepsy #memory
Deadline: Jun 29 2013
Reward: $7,000 USD
The Seeker for this Challenge desires proposals for chemical methods that could rapidly degrade a dilute aqueous solution
Deadline: Jul 30 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Seeker desires a method for producing pseudoephedrine products in such a way that it will be extremely difficult for clandestine che
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
9 Comments
Add CommentLeave the poor mice alone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI forgot, what'd you say?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is really incredible! Also sounds like it could lead to the use of compounds for treating memory impairment, or maybe even help us have better memories. We will need it to learn about and save our troubled planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr perhaps worse off it will enable those who seek to oppress and control to turn otherwise intelligent beings into drones. Such a tool would be undoubtedly misused, as hard as it may be to use in the first place, because those who make a profession out of deciete would surely benefit from it. I suggest you refere to this Sciam article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=natural-born-liars
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeen following this for some time, there's some wonderful streams about this sort of thing at
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08
Remarkable program all-in-all, on a host of subjects, if you are lucky enough to have caught it on your local Public Radio then you know already.
J IX-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSurely, you will be vaporized soon...
:)~
What I'm most curious about is whether or not this enzyme can help people HOLD memories, rebuild them, and/or take in more information without needing to repeat reading the same old thing a second time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan we use this drug to help create new memories, or just wipe them away?
keep on testing on those mince! this is useful and very important!
I have tertiary syphilis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had some difficulties to understand the article. It's funny because I usually complain that Scientific American editors over simplify their articles, but this one is, I think, lacks the proper informative content to connect the puzzle in a logical manner. The article states: "When the recall tests were performed an hour later, the mice with increased �CaMKII levels were found to be severely impaired on all three tasks.".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisO.K. It means that high levels of the enzyme cause deficit in the recall of memory. Next: "Those transgenics treated with the �CaMKII inhibitor 15 minutes before recall performed normally", Means that the enzyme has no effect on memory acquisition, but only on recall. High level creates deficit, when low level means normal ability. Next: "However, when the inhibitor was administered two days before training and then continuously for 28 days, so that it was removed two days before the mice were asked to recall the memory, the transgenic mice again exhibited severe memory deficits". It means, and here is the part which wasn't written in the article, that the enzyme has opposite effects on acquisition of memory and it's recall. When highly active while the recalling, It lowers and damages the ability to do so, but while highly active through training, It has no effect or positive one - this wasn't discussed here in the article. That's what I understood. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.