The Raelian Movement
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Johns Hopkins Researchers Discover How to Erase Memory
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/johns_hopkins_researchers_discover_how_to_erase_memory
Release Date: 10/28/2010
Researchers working with mice have discovered that by removing a
protein from the region of the brain responsible for recalling fear,
they can permanently delete traumatic memories. Their report on a
molecular means of erasing fear memories in rodents appears this week
in Science Express.
"When a traumatic event occurs, it creates a fearful memory that can
last a lifetime and have a debilitating effect on a person's life,"
says Richard L. Huganir, Ph.D., professor and director of neuroscience
at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes
Medical Institute investigator. "Our finding describing these
molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in that process raises the
possibility of manipulating those mechanisms with drugs to enhance
behavioral therapy for such conditions as post-traumatic stress
disorder."
Behavioral therapy built around "extinction training" in animal models
has proven helpful in easing the depth of the emotional response to
traumatic memories, but not in completely removing the memory itself,
making relapse common.
Huganir and postdoctoral fellow Roger Clem focused on the nerve
circuits in the amygdala, the part of the brain known to underly
so-called fear conditioning in people and animals. Using sound to cue
fear in mice, they observed that certain cells in the amygdala
conducted more current after the mouse was exposed to a loud, sudden
tone.
In hopes of understanding the molecular underpinnings of fear memory
formation, the team further examined the proteins in the nerve cells
of the amygdala before and after exposure to the loud tone. They found
temporary increases in the amount of particular proteins — the
calcium-permeable AMPARs — within a few hours of fear conditioning
that peaked at 24 hours and disappeared 48 hours later.
Because these particular proteins are uniquely unstable and can be
removed from nerve cells, the scientists proposed that they might
permanently remove fear by combining behavior therapy and protein
removal and provide a window of opportunity for treatment. "The idea
was to remove these proteins and weaken the connections in the brain
created by the trauma, thereby erasing the memory itself," says
Huganir.
In further experiments, they found that removal of these proteins
depends on the chemical modification of the GluA1 protein. Mice
lacking this chemical modification of GluA1 recovered fear memories
induced by loud tones, whereas littermates that still had normal GluA1
protein did not recover the same fear memories. Huganir suggests that
drugs designed to control and enhance the removal of calcium-permeable
AMPARs may be used to improve memory erasure.
"This may sound like science fiction, the ability to selectively erase
memories," says Huganir. "But this may one day be applicable for the
treatment of debilitating fearful memories in people, such as
post-traumatic stress syndrome associated with war, rape or other
traumatic events."
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Authors on the paper are Roger L. Clem and Huganir, both of Johns Hopkins.
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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