SENTINEL WATCH July 6, 2009 Issue

TO END PAINFUL MEMORIES

PAMELA COOK

"SUPPOSE SCIENTISTS COULD ERASE certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit." So began an article that ran on the front page of The New York Times this spring ("Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory," Benedict Carey, April 6, 2009).

It continued, "Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills."

I found this article thought-provoking, not just in terms of exploring current research on the topic but also in considering some of the potential ethical implications of erasing memories. Reading it, along with the hundreds of reader comments posted online, raised significant questions for me about the nature of memory, including the obvious question, Where do memories reside? Or, as the author of this piece asked, "How on earth can a clump of tissue possibly capture and store everything—poems, emotional reactions, locations of favorite bars, distant childhood scenes?"