How to forget you, does memory removal really exist?

In life, there are always some moments or people that make us sad when we recall them. How to forget someone? This has always been a topic of discussion among scholars and writers.

Su Shi said: "For ten years, life and death were in vain. I could never forget them without thinking about them.

Bai Juyi said: The end of the world may come, but this hatred will last forever.

In short, I just can't forget it.

So Huang Yaoshi found something: a kind of wine called "Drunkenness, Dreaming of Death", which can make people forget everything after drinking it. It looks like the Forget Love Potion.

Well, the above is actually a prelude. Is there really no way to erase memory? In fact, there is a way, and that is memory removal. Today, we will talk about the issue of memory removal.

01. Discovery of the memory area

During the era of classical biology, scientists conducted many amazing experiments.

From Pavlov's dogs to 10% brain usage to full brain usage

From the concept of the whole brain to the functional division of the brain, the memory area was also discovered at this time.

So scientists began to think about memory removal technology.

I believe that everyone who has seen Planet of the Apes knows that in that movie, the apes performed memory removal surgery on humans, directly erasing all of their memories.

Yes, this is the original medical method. To clear memory, you only need to destroy the memory area.

02. Memory removal technology

Henry Molaison (HM_Baidu Encyclopedia), known as the most important patient in the history of neuroscience, underwent surgery due to epilepsy. As a result, after the removal of the medial temporal lobe area, including the amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, entorhinal cortex and perirhinal cortex, he suffered a side effect and could not form new memories. Because the part of his brain that malfunctioned was very critical, he received a lot of attention. During his lifetime, HM's only occupation was a patient, but after his death, he enjoyed the same treatment as Einstein - dissecting the brain for analysis. The entire process of brain slicing was broadcast on the Internet. During the 3-day live broadcast, more than 400,000 people around the world watched the live broadcast. At the peak of the ratings, there were 18,000 people watching at the same time. So the memory is gone.

However, the above methods are simple and crude, and cannot meet everyone's needs, because what we need is not like Alzheimer's disease, where people forget everything and even fail to recognize their loved ones.

What we need is the ability to specifically remove certain memories while retaining others.

Is it feasible?

03. Eliminate some memory at a fixed point

In fact, as early as 1968, the famous psychologist Donald Lewis discovered that giving a mouse an electric shock to its brain could erase the mouse's memory of certain "unpleasant events" it had experienced.

Subsequent experiments have shown that people's memories can be blurred by using repetitive treatments or injecting certain drugs, such as propranolol, into the brain.

Today I would like to introduce an article: Kroes MCW, Tendolkar I, van Wingen GA, et al. An electroconvulsive therapy procedure impairs reconsolidation of episodic memories in humans[J]. Nature Neuroscience, 2014, 17(2): 204-206.

In this article, the author used an electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) method, which can "eliminate" some memories at a specific point.

Here is a brief introduction to the method: First, the patients were shown two slides telling painful stories to make them remember them. Then they were asked to recall the stories and received electric shock therapy while they were recalling. As a result, these people remembered less and less, and eventually they completely forgot the content.

This is the result of the processing

Well, with this method, the memory was successfully cleared.

So, it seems that forgetting is not impossible.

Of course, although this technology is currently in clinical use, most countries do not have this technology yet, so we still have to wait.

In addition, when the electric shock is given, you must be recalling the event, otherwise the corresponding neural network of this memory cannot be activated. Otherwise, innocent people will be affected.