A scenario worthy of the movie Eternal Sunshine is about to become reality. Dutch scientists claim that it is possible to get rid of certain emotional memories using electroconvulsive therapy. The study, published by the journal Nature Neuroscience and led by the team of neuroscientist Marijn Kroes at the Radboud Univesity in Nijmegen (Netherlands), proves for the first time that the manipulation of human memory is not a myth.
The researchers showed two slide shows to a group of 42 patients with severe depression. The first told the story of a young boy killed by a car during a walk with his mother and the second, the story of two sisters, one of whom is assaulted and molested by an escaped convict. A week later, a partial version of the first story was shown to them again. The study participants were then separated into three groups. The first was treated with electroshock and submitted to a questionnaire just after the end of anesthesia. The second also received electroshocks, but responded to the test only 24 hours after the operation. The third, a control group, was not electroshocked and answered the same questions.
An alteration that takes 24 hours
Result: the patients of the first and third group recalled the two stories while the second group was not able to remember the slide show which they had seen twice. According to the researchers, the fact that memories can be accessed immediately, but not a day later, simply suggests that the alteration of the memory storage process by electricity takes time, reports Time magazine.
If this technique may shock some scientists, the authors of the study believe that it could lead to new treatments for diseases such as depression, post-traumatic stress or drug addiction.
