I guess many (if not all) of us have been through some very bad experiences that we would like to wipe out of our memory: a bad date, a car accident, a terrible performance, a desvastating break up. If you are into cinema you might be thinkg about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Lacuna Inc.
Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia, in Augusta, have been looking for a similar idea that the movie presents but the key factor in their research is a protein (instead of a brain-wake gizmo) with a very important role in learning and memory consolidation. The protein is called "Alpha-CaM Kinase II" and have been tried on conditionated mice and their long term memory. The experiment's outcome showed that the mice had actually forgot about what they "learnt" or remembered about their conditioning.
This strikes me quite hard because if yoy forget a specific event in your life, wouldn't you also forget what you learnt from that? and you can't make other forget the same and they'll tell you about it and if you are given specific details about something your mind will recreate it and you will accept it. As explained in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il0u2s_WGXA&feature=player_embedded
But this is a bad thing as well, because you can get some new false memories and be tricked by mean people.
How will the get to just One and That memory only? What if they miss it and delete your best memory? Do you create a shoot or a pill? If this is developed and controlled by war pigs or rotten politicians to mass control people? Where is the stop line for this?
PS: The term “lacuna” means a gap or missing part; there’s a disorder called lacunar amnesia, in which a person develops a gap in his or her memory about a specific event.
I personally wouldn't have my memory deleted. I think that life is about good and bad experiences and there is no reason to forget about the bad ones, because you are who you are because of your experiences.
ReplyDeleteThe mind already tricks us, so if this pill is created it would worse our condition.
I don't see any benefit from having your memory deleted, can you name any?
Those childhood traumas which keep causing you problems in your social or romantic life even when you are an adult, maybe?
ReplyDeleteEven though I agree with Mackarena's perspective towards the good and bad experiences of life, I think that there are some things about life that are better to forget; some memories become wounds that you are not able to heal anymore. Erasing part of your memory would also be useful for getting rid of the element that causes a phobia, for example--personally, it would be magnificient to me to finally get over my haemophobia or my apiphobia!
ReplyDeleteIt would be good to have this option not to erase all bad memories but the ones related to accidents,which create traumas in people. To erase traumatic memories could be a good option for psychiatrists to cure unnatural mental illness like a trauma related to rape.
ReplyDelete