Eternal Sunshine a real possibility!
 

October 26, 2008


Got a painful memory you want to get rid of?

Joe Tsien, a neurobiologist at the Medical College of Georgia can help. He's been studying a protein called alpha-CaM kinase II, which plays an important role in recalling your memories. A few years ago, he created mice whose sensitivity to the protein he could control, and then started playing with them.

He started with the classic Pavlovian conditioning--he placed the mice in a chamber where they first heard a tone, and then got a shock. In time, the mice would get nervous on hearing the tone.

A month later, he stuck the mice in a different chamber, increased their sensitivity to the protein and played the tone. Nothing.

In the original shock chamber, however, the mice were cowering again.

Clearly, Tsien had succeeded in deleting the part of the mice's memories that associated the tone with Doom.

Eventually ,this could be tried on humans as well.

The intent is not to make you forget past lovers, it's to help people get over their phobias. Of past lovers.

Sign me up

I would never try something like that. Messing with the brain is too much for me. One wrong move and they can make you forget your name, your birthday, your parents, memories with now dead relatives. Anything. I think it's way too risky. Really, the idea of that actually scares me.

Incidentally, post 6000.

It's been a fun 6000 posts here at HDC. I hope you've all enjoyed my stay as much as I have. Here's to another 6000!

:) :) :) :) :)

...and then Tsien watched Eternal Sunshine, and realized just how much this could fuck up someone's mind.

i just sit in the corner of the room.
hold my head in my hands n rock back n forth whilst singing
take me home..country road. :o

Woohoo! Goodbye childhood!

So people could forget all the mistakes that they have learned from and make them again. Woohoo!

My thoughts exactly.

This is actually quite frightening.

Someone needs to shut this guy down.He has no right to play with someone else's mind.

hey its better than playing with yourself (erhm, i mean with your own mind)