The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever
wired.com
wired.com
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
And Peter Oehen has a more in depth explanation in his lecture here:
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”).
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.
'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?
> they become mnemonic freaks
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.
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.
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.
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.
cackling evilly....
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.
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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.
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.
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".
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).
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.
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.
Still, a better understanding of the chemical association between event memory and emotion is very interesting. Even if it's not used to develop widely available drug treatments, being able to manually and precisely knock out the link has great implications for developing effective psychological treatment of PTSD, depression, etc.
There are some interesting videos on Youtube of people having their phobias cured, for instance.
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...
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.
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...
Full disclosure: Ross Jeffries wrote an article for my magazine, so I may be slightly biased in favor.
Whoa, now you've really got my interest. Tell me more, dude :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Em...
Whenever something's proponent is arguing for suspending the scientific method in preference for something that's "free from hypotheses, pre-conceptions and assumptions, and seeks to describe rather than explain" you know you're in trouble.
Of course, me trying something out also constitutes a form of science (with a sample size of n=1 and no placebo controls, but at least I find out if it works for me).
That being said, I haven't given NLP a serious try (yet). I have a bunch of books on it but I find it hard to get started for some reason. Maybe I need a coach, but their rates are typically way out of my league.
Here's an example of a book I own, which is NLP-based: http://www.amazon.com/Make-People-Like-Seconds-Less/dp/07611...
The premise of that book is pretty damn appealing. Perhaps you see now why I'm interested in this area.
My overall impression of NLPers is sleaziness and trying to milk me for money via their uber-expensive seminars. However, I'm still going to try and find out if the techniques are useful to me, since I do know people in my social circle for whom they seem to work.
The main thing I like about NLP is how it breaks down thought. It doesn't just see "thoughts" as atomic, but rather asks about mental images, internal dialogue, emotional associations, etc (ie the VAKOG model of sensory representation - Visual Auditory Kinesthetic Olphactory Gustatory).
All in all, I don't think I need to be karma-bitchslappad just for asking a question. Also, I'm already in a shitty mood since I'm still hungover from Saturday :)
Of course this also means that one cannot just follow the techniques as they are. It's an artistic, creative endeavor.
This being said there were a lot of things I never really thought were correct in NLP or at least never worked for me. Some of the emphasis on puns for example.....
Be happy to further continue this conversation.
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.