Post by Adrian2040 on Apr 18, 2012 23:12:53 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure everybody here must have at least one memory that keeps haunting them for endless hours a day. Maybe you didn't buy one super deal for a extremely rare item. Maybe you were made a comment that you shouldn't have. Maybe you tried to backstab someone and not only does it make you feel guilty, but the plan ended up backfiring at you.
What if there was a way to get this memory out of your system, forever? Take the extra step to ignorance, which is bliss and shall bless you with a guilt-free life? What if this gift was available in the form of a pill? What if this pill did exist?
That's just a quote from the following source: www.wired.com/magazine/2012/02/ff_forgettingpill (Read it all if you have the time.)
Basically, as scientists gain greater grasps on how exactly our memories work; by taking advantage of the chemical reactions going on, they are beginning to find out how to remove some of them completely. If the research continues to be developed properly, it may take only a single pill to wipe a bad experience.
This could help a lot of people, especially people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Also known as PTSD). While this condition is not really widespread, it is still very common in war veterans. It can be difficult for sufferers to readjust back into society. Not only that, but a lot of them have chosen suicide as their way to "deal" with the problem. While many therapies designed to help them, they're not as effective as you may think. With this pill, there finally be a completely effective treatment to help these people move past their lingering trauma.
Apart from that I'm not really sure how it will be used, if at all. As its use and development advances more and more, we're going to have to reflect upon ourselves and ask us how we define memory, and what it means to us. Our ethical values might be put onto new grounds, and we'll have to refine some of our beliefs to accomodate to our new situations.
Fortunately, though, there is always hope. And if we don't like the answers, now we can just go for the path of ignorance and forget them.
What if there was a way to get this memory out of your system, forever? Take the extra step to ignorance, which is bliss and shall bless you with a guilt-free life? What if this gift was available in the form of a pill? What if this pill did exist?
This isn’t Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style mindwiping. In some ways it’s potentially even more effective and more precise. Because of the compartmentalization of memory in the brain—the storage of different aspects of a memory in different areas—the careful application of PKMzeta synthesis inhibitors and other chemicals that interfere with reconsolidation should allow scientists to selectively delete aspects of a memory. Right now, researchers have to inject their obliviating potions directly into the rodent brain. Future treatments, however, will involve targeted inhibitors, like an advanced version of ZIP, that become active only in particular parts of the cortex and only at the precise time a memory is being recalled. The end result will be a menu of pills capable of erasing different kinds of memories—the scent of a former lover or the awful heartbreak of a failed relationship. These thoughts and feelings can be made to vanish, even as the rest of the memory remains perfectly intact.
That's just a quote from the following source: www.wired.com/magazine/2012/02/ff_forgettingpill (Read it all if you have the time.)
Basically, as scientists gain greater grasps on how exactly our memories work; by taking advantage of the chemical reactions going on, they are beginning to find out how to remove some of them completely. If the research continues to be developed properly, it may take only a single pill to wipe a bad experience.
This could help a lot of people, especially people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Also known as PTSD). While this condition is not really widespread, it is still very common in war veterans. It can be difficult for sufferers to readjust back into society. Not only that, but a lot of them have chosen suicide as their way to "deal" with the problem. While many therapies designed to help them, they're not as effective as you may think. With this pill, there finally be a completely effective treatment to help these people move past their lingering trauma.
Apart from that I'm not really sure how it will be used, if at all. As its use and development advances more and more, we're going to have to reflect upon ourselves and ask us how we define memory, and what it means to us. Our ethical values might be put onto new grounds, and we'll have to refine some of our beliefs to accomodate to our new situations.
Fortunately, though, there is always hope. And if we don't like the answers, now we can just go for the path of ignorance and forget them.