6 ms·

The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever

131 points by pier0 15y ago

rue 15y ago
The potential for abuse seems staggeringly high.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- moonchrome 15y ago
  You do realize this is extacy (MDMA) they are talking about ? I think any revolutionary effects of that would have been discovered by now.
  - colanderman 15y ago
    They aren't talking about MDMA. That was mentioned as an example of a drug which is used similarly (but doesn't actually erase memories). They are talking about PKMzeta inhibitors.
    - moonchrome 15y ago
      OK, my mistake, I just saw the classic linkbait and scanned for keywords
  - brother 15y ago
    No, Ecstasy (as it became known on the streets) is usually a mix of methamphetamine and MDMA. The mixture can vary but MDMA alone is not an upper. People abusing MDMA can't achieve the effects they want without the extra dopamine flush. MDMA has a very low addiction profile and has had a horrible life of propaganda and misinformation thrown atop of it. MAPS is actually researching, with promising results, the medicinal effects of it with PSTD. MDMA can been used in therapeutic sessions (i.e. marriage therapy) with staggering results. End of life treatment and acceptance (i.e. cancer) has been shown to be wonderful for couples wishing to "get everything out", so to speak. MDMA isn't a drug you take to have wild manic sex and dance. Ecstasy is. MDMA is a drug you take with your wife once and a while to open the floodgates of emotion and talk about any little thing that could possibly be bothering you or hindering the relationship without fear of repercussion. It's a drug you can take to come to terms with dying and leaving your partner and kids while having a long, open talk with them. It's a chemical that breaks down your inhibitions and leaves you able to study what emotionally ails you without the anxiety that usually coattails along. MDMA is a medicine and we need to start seeing it as that. Sure it has it's possible downsides (abuse potential, neurotoxicity) but we deal with these downsides with any drug we prescribe. We need to give these tools back to therapists so we can stop this cascade of emotional fuckery that we keep passing on generation after generation. Why should we only focus on treating peoples physical symptoms and not their emotional state as well? I'm not speaking of mental illness, either. Along comes a drug that gives great power and insight into the emotional state and we illegalize it because a group of kids are abusing it. We need to pull our heads out of our asses and realize that kids are abusing every prescription drug that will give their head a tingle. We can't stop it, we can only attempt to educate and curb it.
    - rue 15y ago
      MDMA is definitely an upper, both in the sense of being a stimulant, and elevating mood. You're correct that street varieties are now mostly mixed with amphetamines. … I'll note that I wasn't referring to abuse in the sense of substance abuse. I meant morally questionable medical and non-medical uses.
      - brother 15y ago
        It's a slight upper. Compared to it's amphetamine analogs, it's very weak. I'd agree with you on use, but I'm more liberal when it comes to these things. All medicines can have questionable medical/non-medical uses. Take alcohol for example. The real date rape drug, as opposed to the scapegoat GHB/GBL.
    - moonchrome 15y ago
      >MDMA is a drug you take with your wife once and a while to open the floodgates of emotion and talk about any little thing that could possibly be bothering you or hindering the relationship without fear of repercussion. Yes this is true you can actually get pure MDMA and it's not x, and you do use for different effects. I guess I interpreted the OP as "this has the potential for abuse" as in "selective memory wiping" or some other SF context you can assume from this misleading title. I have no problem with recreational "abuse".
    - shin_lao 15y ago
      If you need a pill to speak with your wife, you really have a problem.
      - brother 15y ago
        Yes, I do have a problem. We all have emotional troubles, some more than others. I don't see how your point does anything but make noise and attempts a "one-up" of sorts.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  I am thinking, put this in the drinking water.... Show on every TV all the re-runs of the campaign promises of whoever was in office so everyone remembers what they saw... Nobody remembers what they were promised..... cackling evilly....
ComputerGuru 15y ago
Another ridiculously linkbait title from Wired, completely misrepresents the entire point. It erases the emotions associated with painful memories. Not the memories themselves. You won't forget what happened. It doesn't have anywhere near the same potential for abuse a drug fitting the headlines would have (à la MIB).
- colanderman 15y ago
  Did you read the article? I did, and unless I totally missed something, yes, this drug has the ability to erase specific memories.
  - ComputerGuru 15y ago
    Read it and here's what I think: It's a subtle difference. By overriding the trauma associated with the memory, it becomes possible to forget it, but it does not in and of itself cause you to forget the memory. When the memory loses its potency, it becomes just another passing detail. It doesn't have any power over you, it will not haunt you, and in time can be forgotten.
    - rafedb 15y ago
      "Because the protein required to reconsolidate the memory will be absent, the memory will cease to exist. " Not sure how that is a subtle difference? lol pretty explicit in what it is saying imo...which isn't what you are saying.
    - colanderman 15y ago
      Except the drug does not "override trauma". It actually causes you to forget the memory you are recalling. Judging by your username, I'm going to guess you are familiar with the operation of DRAM: it must periodically be refreshed by reading the data out and then writing it back in. Human memory works the same way (albeit without the requirement of continual refresh). The drug in the article interrupts the write-back process, and the memory is then lost.
- 15y ago
Alex3917 15y ago
"Because [MDMA] triggers a rush of positive emotion, the patients recalled their trauma without feeling overwhelmed. As a result, the remembered event was associated with the positive feelings triggered by the pill." For what it's worth, this isn't entirely true. What actually happens is that MDMA shuts down the amygdala, which allows patients to access memories from the objective perspective of someone who is no longer in danger, and then reinterpret those memories in a more healthy way. The positive emotions created by MDMA do help in this process, but it's not the entire story. Michael Mithoefer refers to this starting at 10:45 in this MAPS lecture: http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video3.html http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video3.html And Peter Oehen has a more in depth explanation in his lecture here: http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video4.html http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video4.html
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  From the sound of it, then, this is the same as the normal healing/coping process, except the road is shorted with the assistance of drugs?
  - salemh 15y ago
    Sometimes "normal health/coping" is not possible, or inexorably difficult. PTSD example: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ptsd+mdma http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... So, you could argue that in some cases it is "shortened," and in many cases for severe trauma, it is not shortened at all. Rather, it opens healing/coping as an actual possibility. Especially for trauma which induces self or extro-destructive behavior, the "long-road" to "normal healing/coping" could be dangerous.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  >MDMA shuts down the amygdala, which allows patients to access memories from the objective perspective of someone who is no longer in danger Remember the literal meaning of "ecstacy:" To stand outside onesself From Ancient Greek ἔκστασις (ekstasis), from ἐξίστημι (eksistēmi, “I displace”), from ἐκ (ek, “out”) and ἵστημι (histēmi, “I stand”).
fferen 15y ago
What I find more interesting than repressing memory is enhancing it: 'If the genetic expression of PKMzeta is amped up—by, say, genetically engineering rats to overproduce the stuff—they become mnemonic freaks, able to convert even the most mundane events into long-term memory. (Their performance on a standard test of recall is nearly double that of normal animals.) Furthermore, once neurons begin producing PKMzeta, the protein tends to linger, marking the neural connection as a memory. “The molecules themselves are always changing, but the high level of PKMzeta stays constant,” Sacktor says. “That’s what makes the endurance of the memory possible.”' Anyone know of any product development based on this, or if it's viable?
- apl 15y ago
  > they become mnemonic freaks With heavy emphasis on the freaks. Messing with specific protein kinases by simply ramping up production/phosphorylation doesn't just give you better long-term memory. It severely alters normal plasticity mechanisms, one consequence of which being selectively enhanced test performance. I'd say it might be viable, but in the 10+ year timeframe. EDIT: In general, the implications of Nader's stuff (which wasn't really new, by the way) haven't been thoroughly understood. Mechanisms underlying long-term retention are unclear; we don't even know if LTP/LTD actually mediate LTM or are mere epiphenomena/sub-mechanisms. The whole picture is very, very fuzzy. We're far from magical drugs.
- ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago
  "What I find more interesting than repressing memory is enhancing it, Anyone know of any product development based on this, or if it's viable?" I'm certainly no expert in the field of neuroscience, but in terms of practical and available memory improvement, I've found that practicing mnemonic techniques is very helpful. If you're unfamiliar with this area of study, I'm basically referring to a set of techniques that aid in memory retention, mostly through creative visualization and pattern creation. If you can get past the wild claims put forth by guys like Tony Buzan, you'll find a wealth of useful information on how we can learn to remember and recall more information. I've found the books of Dominic O'Brien to be good resources. There is another book called "Moonwalking With Einstein" that shows how applied study in this area can lead to real results.
firefoxman1 15y ago
This reminded me of a really good movie about a guy (Jim Carey) who gets a painful memory erased and how he regrets it afterward. It's called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind if anyone is interested.
- underwater 15y ago
  The movie was referenced in the article.
  - mhitza 15y ago
    Thats why he was reminded of it.
  - firefoxman1 15y ago
    Lol you're right. I hadn't read that far when I posted the comment. My bad.
urbanredneck 15y ago
What about long term? What is the effects in 10, 20 even 30 years on the ability to remember? There are many issues with this, interesting as it may be I remain sceptical.
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  One must separate scepticism of the specific claim and scepticism of the overall viability of the treatment. On the latter, you are correct. The efficacy claim, though, if sustained, is alone tremendously profound. There are many psychological diseases, at least in part based on memory, whose alleviation would be worth the risk of complications developing decades down the line.
Eliezer 15y ago
Jeepers, that's like the 27th time someone has posted a memory-tampering trick to HN in the last week. You don't remember? You must have used one. Incidentally, some of this research was already written into a forthcoming chapter of Methods, and people are going to think "Oh he just got that off that HN article", and they're going to be wrong. 'Twas just an amusing coincidence.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > someone has posted a memory-tampering trick to HN This is hacker news. And what a wonderful thing to hack is someone's own brain. Of course, I'll wait until it's easier to rsync myself back to sanity if the hack goes wrong.
itmag 15y ago
Speaking of this, has anyone tried Neuro-Linguistic Programming (eg the swish pattern) to accomplish the same goal? There are some interesting videos on Youtube of people having their phobias cured, for instance.
- peteretep 15y ago
  Having worked with a whole bunch of NLPers, the striking and consistent theme is how little success people practicing NLP actually seem to bring in to their lives. I've even been to one or two live NLP seminars, and the people you meet there really are the dregs of polite society. Everyone is looking for a quick fix, and yet most people have been taking the NLP kool-aid for three or four years, and excitedly talk about all the conferences they've been to...
  - itmag 15y ago
    This guy is an acquaintance of mine: http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=Going_Mental:_Reaching_Your_Goals_in_Business_and_Sports_-_Full_Contact_NLP_Coaching_from_a_Full_Contact_Fighter_by_Jakob_Lovstad http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=Going_Me... He seems pretty successful at life (MMA fighter, author, software engineering degree, Oxford distinction holder). However, I don't know how much of that can be attributed to NLP. But just giving you one datapoint in the other direction.
    - peteretep 15y ago
      I knew a tall, good-looking, confident, and succesful guy, who claimed that his success with women came down to him hypnotising them. But I also knew a whole bunch of seriously weird guys whose lack of success with women was a probably a direct result of their thinking it was posible to hypnotise women in to bed...
      - itmag 15y ago
        So you've been in touch with the Speed Seduction community? Mind telling me more?, I'm fascinated by that stuff. Full disclosure: Ross Jeffries wrote an article for my magazine, so I may be slightly biased in favor.
kahawe 15y ago
Actually this sounds a lot like what EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) does. As someone who has tried EMDR, it is strange how you cannot re-connect with those painful feelings you had (in my case) 1 or 2 sessions ago and all you did was move your eyes. As far as I know, it has been proven to be extremely useful but a consensus as to WHY it actually works has yet to be reached. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMDR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMDR

131 points by pier0 15y ago

rue 15y ago

The potential for abuse seems staggeringly high.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
moonchrome 15y ago
You do realize this is extacy (MDMA) they are talking about ? I think any revolutionary effects of that would have been discovered by now.
- colanderman 15y ago
  They aren't talking about MDMA. That was mentioned as an example of a drug which is used similarly (but doesn't actually erase memories). They are talking about PKMzeta inhibitors.
  - moonchrome 15y ago
    OK, my mistake, I just saw the classic linkbait and scanned for keywords
- brother 15y ago
  No, Ecstasy (as it became known on the streets) is usually a mix of methamphetamine and MDMA. The mixture can vary but MDMA alone is not an upper. People abusing MDMA can't achieve the effects they want without the extra dopamine flush. MDMA has a very low addiction profile and has had a horrible life of propaganda and misinformation thrown atop of it. MAPS is actually researching, with promising results, the medicinal effects of it with PSTD. MDMA can been used in therapeutic sessions (i.e. marriage therapy) with staggering results. End of life treatment and acceptance (i.e. cancer) has been shown to be wonderful for couples wishing to "get everything out", so to speak. MDMA isn't a drug you take to have wild manic sex and dance. Ecstasy is. MDMA is a drug you take with your wife once and a while to open the floodgates of emotion and talk about any little thing that could possibly be bothering you or hindering the relationship without fear of repercussion. It's a drug you can take to come to terms with dying and leaving your partner and kids while having a long, open talk with them. It's a chemical that breaks down your inhibitions and leaves you able to study what emotionally ails you without the anxiety that usually coattails along. MDMA is a medicine and we need to start seeing it as that. Sure it has it's possible downsides (abuse potential, neurotoxicity) but we deal with these downsides with any drug we prescribe. We need to give these tools back to therapists so we can stop this cascade of emotional fuckery that we keep passing on generation after generation. Why should we only focus on treating peoples physical symptoms and not their emotional state as well? I'm not speaking of mental illness, either. Along comes a drug that gives great power and insight into the emotional state and we illegalize it because a group of kids are abusing it. We need to pull our heads out of our asses and realize that kids are abusing every prescription drug that will give their head a tingle. We can't stop it, we can only attempt to educate and curb it.
  - rue 15y ago
    MDMA is definitely an upper, both in the sense of being a stimulant, and elevating mood. You're correct that street varieties are now mostly mixed with amphetamines. … I'll note that I wasn't referring to abuse in the sense of substance abuse. I meant morally questionable medical and non-medical uses.
    - brother 15y ago
      It's a slight upper. Compared to it's amphetamine analogs, it's very weak. I'd agree with you on use, but I'm more liberal when it comes to these things. All medicines can have questionable medical/non-medical uses. Take alcohol for example. The real date rape drug, as opposed to the scapegoat GHB/GBL.
  - moonchrome 15y ago
    >MDMA is a drug you take with your wife once and a while to open the floodgates of emotion and talk about any little thing that could possibly be bothering you or hindering the relationship without fear of repercussion. Yes this is true you can actually get pure MDMA and it's not x, and you do use for different effects. I guess I interpreted the OP as "this has the potential for abuse" as in "selective memory wiping" or some other SF context you can assume from this misleading title. I have no problem with recreational "abuse".
  - shin_lao 15y ago
    If you need a pill to speak with your wife, you really have a problem.
    - brother 15y ago
      Yes, I do have a problem. We all have emotional troubles, some more than others. I don't see how your point does anything but make noise and attempts a "one-up" of sorts.
einhverfr 15y ago
I am thinking, put this in the drinking water.... Show on every TV all the re-runs of the campaign promises of whoever was in office so everyone remembers what they saw... Nobody remembers what they were promised..... cackling evilly....

ComputerGuru 15y ago

Another ridiculously linkbait title from Wired, completely misrepresents the entire point. It erases the emotions associated with painful memories. Not the memories themselves. You won't forget what happened. It doesn't have anywhere near the same potential for abuse a drug fitting the headlines would have (à la MIB).

colanderman 15y ago
Did you read the article? I did, and unless I totally missed something, yes, this drug has the ability to erase specific memories.
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  Read it and here's what I think: It's a subtle difference. By overriding the trauma associated with the memory, it becomes possible to forget it, but it does not in and of itself cause you to forget the memory. When the memory loses its potency, it becomes just another passing detail. It doesn't have any power over you, it will not haunt you, and in time can be forgotten.
  - rafedb 15y ago
    "Because the protein required to reconsolidate the memory will be absent, the memory will cease to exist. " Not sure how that is a subtle difference? lol pretty explicit in what it is saying imo...which isn't what you are saying.
  - colanderman 15y ago
    Except the drug does not "override trauma". It actually causes you to forget the memory you are recalling. Judging by your username, I'm going to guess you are familiar with the operation of DRAM: it must periodically be refreshed by reading the data out and then writing it back in. Human memory works the same way (albeit without the requirement of continual refresh). The drug in the article interrupts the write-back process, and the memory is then lost.
15y ago

Alex3917 15y ago

"Because [MDMA] triggers a rush of positive emotion, the patients recalled their trauma without feeling overwhelmed. As a result, the remembered event was associated with the positive feelings triggered by the pill." For what it's worth, this isn't entirely true. What actually happens is that MDMA shuts down the amygdala, which allows patients to access memories from the objective perspective of someone who is no longer in danger, and then reinterpret those memories in a more healthy way. The positive emotions created by MDMA do help in this process, but it's not the entire story. Michael Mithoefer refers to this starting at 10:45 in this MAPS lecture: http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video3.html http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video3.html And Peter Oehen has a more in depth explanation in his lecture here: http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video4.html http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video4.html

sliverstorm 15y ago
From the sound of it, then, this is the same as the normal healing/coping process, except the road is shorted with the assistance of drugs?
- salemh 15y ago
  Sometimes "normal health/coping" is not possible, or inexorably difficult. PTSD example: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ptsd+mdma http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... So, you could argue that in some cases it is "shortened," and in many cases for severe trauma, it is not shortened at all. Rather, it opens healing/coping as an actual possibility. Especially for trauma which induces self or extro-destructive behavior, the "long-road" to "normal healing/coping" could be dangerous.
JonnieCache 15y ago
>MDMA shuts down the amygdala, which allows patients to access memories from the objective perspective of someone who is no longer in danger Remember the literal meaning of "ecstacy:" To stand outside onesself From Ancient Greek ἔκστασις (ekstasis), from ἐξίστημι (eksistēmi, “I displace”), from ἐκ (ek, “out”) and ἵστημι (histēmi, “I stand”).

fferen 15y ago

What I find more interesting than repressing memory is enhancing it: 'If the genetic expression of PKMzeta is amped up—by, say, genetically engineering rats to overproduce the stuff—they become mnemonic freaks, able to convert even the most mundane events into long-term memory. (Their performance on a standard test of recall is nearly double that of normal animals.) Furthermore, once neurons begin producing PKMzeta, the protein tends to linger, marking the neural connection as a memory. “The molecules themselves are always changing, but the high level of PKMzeta stays constant,” Sacktor says. “That’s what makes the endurance of the memory possible.”' Anyone know of any product development based on this, or if it's viable?

apl 15y ago
> they become mnemonic freaks With heavy emphasis on the freaks. Messing with specific protein kinases by simply ramping up production/phosphorylation doesn't just give you better long-term memory. It severely alters normal plasticity mechanisms, one consequence of which being selectively enhanced test performance. I'd say it might be viable, but in the 10+ year timeframe. EDIT: In general, the implications of Nader's stuff (which wasn't really new, by the way) haven't been thoroughly understood. Mechanisms underlying long-term retention are unclear; we don't even know if LTP/LTD actually mediate LTM or are mere epiphenomena/sub-mechanisms. The whole picture is very, very fuzzy. We're far from magical drugs.
ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago
"What I find more interesting than repressing memory is enhancing it, Anyone know of any product development based on this, or if it's viable?" I'm certainly no expert in the field of neuroscience, but in terms of practical and available memory improvement, I've found that practicing mnemonic techniques is very helpful. If you're unfamiliar with this area of study, I'm basically referring to a set of techniques that aid in memory retention, mostly through creative visualization and pattern creation. If you can get past the wild claims put forth by guys like Tony Buzan, you'll find a wealth of useful information on how we can learn to remember and recall more information. I've found the books of Dominic O'Brien to be good resources. There is another book called "Moonwalking With Einstein" that shows how applied study in this area can lead to real results.

firefoxman1 15y ago

This reminded me of a really good movie about a guy (Jim Carey) who gets a painful memory erased and how he regrets it afterward. It's called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind if anyone is interested.

underwater 15y ago
The movie was referenced in the article.
- mhitza 15y ago
  Thats why he was reminded of it.
- firefoxman1 15y ago
  Lol you're right. I hadn't read that far when I posted the comment. My bad.

urbanredneck 15y ago

What about long term? What is the effects in 10, 20 even 30 years on the ability to remember? There are many issues with this, interesting as it may be I remain sceptical.

JumpCrisscross 15y ago
One must separate scepticism of the specific claim and scepticism of the overall viability of the treatment. On the latter, you are correct. The efficacy claim, though, if sustained, is alone tremendously profound. There are many psychological diseases, at least in part based on memory, whose alleviation would be worth the risk of complications developing decades down the line.

Eliezer 15y ago

Jeepers, that's like the 27th time someone has posted a memory-tampering trick to HN in the last week. You don't remember? You must have used one. Incidentally, some of this research was already written into a forthcoming chapter of Methods, and people are going to think "Oh he just got that off that HN article", and they're going to be wrong. 'Twas just an amusing coincidence.

rbanffy 15y ago
> someone has posted a memory-tampering trick to HN This is hacker news. And what a wonderful thing to hack is someone's own brain. Of course, I'll wait until it's easier to rsync myself back to sanity if the hack goes wrong.

itmag 15y ago

Speaking of this, has anyone tried Neuro-Linguistic Programming (eg the swish pattern) to accomplish the same goal? There are some interesting videos on Youtube of people having their phobias cured, for instance.

peteretep 15y ago
Having worked with a whole bunch of NLPers, the striking and consistent theme is how little success people practicing NLP actually seem to bring in to their lives. I've even been to one or two live NLP seminars, and the people you meet there really are the dregs of polite society. Everyone is looking for a quick fix, and yet most people have been taking the NLP kool-aid for three or four years, and excitedly talk about all the conferences they've been to...
- itmag 15y ago
  This guy is an acquaintance of mine: http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=Going_Mental:_Reaching_Your_Goals_in_Business_and_Sports_-_Full_Contact_NLP_Coaching_from_a_Full_Contact_Fighter_by_Jakob_Lovstad http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=Going_Me... He seems pretty successful at life (MMA fighter, author, software engineering degree, Oxford distinction holder). However, I don't know how much of that can be attributed to NLP. But just giving you one datapoint in the other direction.
  - peteretep 15y ago
    I knew a tall, good-looking, confident, and succesful guy, who claimed that his success with women came down to him hypnotising them. But I also knew a whole bunch of seriously weird guys whose lack of success with women was a probably a direct result of their thinking it was posible to hypnotise women in to bed...
    - itmag 15y ago
      So you've been in touch with the Speed Seduction community? Mind telling me more?, I'm fascinated by that stuff. Full disclosure: Ross Jeffries wrote an article for my magazine, so I may be slightly biased in favor.

kahawe 15y ago

Actually this sounds a lot like what EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) does. As someone who has tried EMDR, it is strange how you cannot re-connect with those painful feelings you had (in my case) 1 or 2 sessions ago and all you did was move your eyes. As far as I know, it has been proven to be extremely useful but a consensus as to WHY it actually works has yet to be reached. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMDR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMDR