News Treating Mental Illness By Changing Memories Of Things Past

[MyPTSD]

Author Marcel Proust makes a compelling case that our identities and decisions are shaped in profound and ongoing ways by our memories. This truth is powerfully reflected in mental illnesses, like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and addictions. In PTSD, memories of traumas intrude vividly upon consciousness, causing distress, driving people to avoid reminders of their traumas, and increasing risk for addiction and suicide. In addiction, memories of drug use influence reactions to drug-related cues and motivate compulsive drug use.

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[Underdog]

Interesting!

 

[Go Hungry]

That is very interesting. And somewhat worrisome. I mean.. a person is his memories. That's what his entire identity is based on. I wonder how dangerous it would be, if by altering some memories it resulted in unexpected side effects. Still.. I can imagine some memories that I would rather not have. Or would have end differently. Strange.

 

[greenleaf]

I agree, @Go Hungry.

It's one thing if a memory was of something somehow completely unconnected to the rest of your life, though even there it gets networked into lots of things occurring afterwards, I'd think... but for people with childhood trauma, the network of trauma-related memories is so intertwined with everything else (including any good childhood memories) that I don't see how this is possible without a complete brainwipe like in various Science Fiction movies... Memory is still not well understood so this all seems pretty premature to me. Though I would likely go see a Sci Fi movie based on this...

 

[Go Hungry]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind involves that I think. Never saw it, but I think that's the basic premise.

 

[Springer80]

Personally, I would not be volunteering for this. For all the screwed up ways my ptsd body has wreaked havoc on my life, do I really think that just because you scrubbed clean the recorded memory that your instinct and behaviour and body and emotion would automatically follow suit. I suspect that you could well end up with ptsd and something akin to a self imposed dementia. Imagine how messed up that would make you?

 

[Go Hungry]

Yeah really. With the structural brain differences and accelerated endocrine system, you might still have all the symptoms yet not have any idea what they were about. Even if you had reminders that you had PTSD, you might wonder why and then become obsessed with the idea that you don't know who you truly are. I think I already have enough troubles with that.

 

[Springer80]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

One of my favourites. I saw it in a very small theatre on the outskirts of town, with my then boyfriend. It was an early evening showing and there was only the two of us in the cinema. We rolled up our jackets and laid down in the central isle to watch it.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

The assumption made is that if you change the memories, then the symptoms will disappear. Well, I am not buying that premise. There was recently another post with a study showing that memories aren't needed in order for someone to develop PTSD. So these two studies are in a way at odds with each other.

I think its important to realize that this study, in addition to a number of others posted here in this forum, are based on studies done on rats. We are VERY far from this having some sort of practical application in humans.

 

[Ronin]

To somehow complicated set of personal experiences, I honestly have a reason to consider that very premise whole lot of made up whacko psychology not based in actual, solid sort of research. Memory also is rather complex, there's multiple *types* of memory involved in remembering every small thing in the world, let alone some huge one - it's simply not possible to induce a loss like that without doing some major damage in the process.

And as Solara has said, species differences for the basics. Human brains are different. Conclusions based on one species aren't conclusive evidence for another.