Medical Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory

[rhody]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/health/research/06brain.html"

The article is a little dated, but interesting, I had never read it till now.
A friend sent me info on Andre Fenton's work: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds...andre+a+f&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=10fa48930cd2b7df" provided.

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit.
The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

I found this information particularly interesting: NIH Funding, can this really be true, from: Society for Neuroscience ?

Now neuroscience, a field that barely existed a generation ago, is racing ahead, attracting billions of dollars in new financing and throngs of researchers. The National Institutes of Health last year spent $5.2 billion, nearly 20 percent of its total budget, on brain-related projects, according to the Society for Neuroscience.

and

In a 1999 paper in the journal Nature Neuroscience, two of the most prominent researchers in brain science, Dr. Jeff W. Lichtman and Joshua R. Sanes of Harvard, listed 117 molecules that were somehow involved when one cell creates a lasting speed-dial connection with a neighbor, a process known as “long-term potentiation.”

It turns out this molecule, http://www.science20.com/news/memorys_molecular_machine_fueled_by_pkmzeta" , among the 117 discovered above has special properties.

In fact, the PKMzeta molecules appeared to herd themselves, like Army Rangers occupying a small peninsula, into precisely the fingerlike connections among brain cells that were strengthened. And they stayed there, indefinitely, like biological sentries.

In short: PKMzeta, a wallflower in the great swimming party of chemicals that erupts when one cell stimulates another, looked as if it might be the one that kept the speed-dial function turned on.

and finally, food for thought: the downside, and possible upside...

This possibility of memory editing has enormous possibilities and raises huge ethical issues,” said http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds...+E.+Hyman&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=10fa48930cd2b7df", a neurobiologist at Harvard. “On the one hand, you can imagine a scenario in which a person enters a setting which elicits traumatic memories, but now has a drug that weakens those memories as they come up. Or, in the case of addiction, a drug that weakens the associations that stir craving.”

Researchers have already tried to blunt painful memories and addictive urges using existing drugs; blocking PKMzeta could potentially be far more effective.

Yet any such drug, Dr. Hyman and others argue, could be misused to erase or block memories of bad behavior, even of crimes. If traumatic memories are like malicious stalkers, then troubling memories — and a healthy dread of them — form the foundation of a moral conscience.

For those studying the biology of memory, the properties of PKMzeta promise something grander still: the prospect of retooling the engram factory itself. By 2050 more than 100 million people worldwide will have Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias, scientists estimate, and far more will struggle with age-related memory decline.

Rhody...

 

[Siv]

Thats awesome.

I guess any science/technology can be misused. We just have to try and put enough deterrants to minimize human nature going bad there.

 

[rhody]

The article rang a bell (from the book, "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Normal Doidge that involves the work of http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds...&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=573da4ec7e15bdf2". Freeman found that oxytocin is not released in animals in their first litter, only with litters that follow, suggesting that this neuro-modulator plays a role in wiping out neural circuits that bonded the mother with her first litter. He believes oxytocin melts existing neural pathways to existing connections, so that new ones can be formed. The release of this neuro-modulator is released only briefly, suggesting that its role is to set the stage for a new phase, in which new behaviors replace existing ones.

So, oxytocin may set the stage, and the enzyme PKMZeta may deliver a knockout blow. This neuro-modulator and this enzyme may or may not be linked, only more research will tell.

Rhody...